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How Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township Combats Ransomware With SecurityIQ

The Metropolitan School District (MSD) of Wayne Township is located in the heart of Indiana. The district is home to 16,500 students, 2,500 employees and over 15,000 computers and devices.

After experiencing four ransomware attacks in a few short years, Chief Technology Officer Pete Just knew it was time to take a new approach to educating his faculty and staff about the risks of phishing and malware. Pete made several changes to the district’s security strategy and enrolled their employees in SecurityIQ awareness training. Pete’s efforts have been successful — the district has remained ransomware free since deploying these changes in late 2017.

Pete, a former teacher, uses SecurityIQ to deliver personalized security awareness training to employees who need it the most. We met with Pete to learn more about his approach and how he’s used SecurityIQ to keep his district’s data secure.  

Enhancing Security Through Workforce Education

Pete helped pioneer personalized learning at MSD of Wayne Township long before leveraging it in his security awareness training program. Using technology and data-driven insights, Pete and the MSD of Wayne Township boosted graduation rates by letting students choose education paths tailored to their needs and learning styles.

“There are two ways we like to think about personalized learning — one for students and one for staff,” said Pete. “We teach our faculty to personalize education through actionable classroom data.”

Pete follows this same approach when teaching staff how to identify phishing attacks. “Rather than hosting a meeting and making staff sit through a three-hour training, we tailor training to their own level of understanding. If we want to teach them something new, we first assess what they know. No one likes to sit in a room and listen to a talking head. And they don’t like getting trained on (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from InfoSec Resources authored by Megan Sawle. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infosecResources/~3/RwstYPvUMOc/