The warning is a rare admission from the FBI about the threat from fake emergency data requests submitted by hackers with access to police email accounts.
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The hacker, who goes by Vizor, tells TechCrunch that they exploited a bug in the popular game's anti-cheat software for months.
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TechCrunch found that X's AI chatbot produced incorrect results about the U.S. presidential election, even as votes were still being cast.
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This glossary includes some of the most common terms and expressions we use in our articles, and explanations of how — and why — we use them.
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This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of staff on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser.
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Alexander Moucka was arrested in October in Canada. Moucka is suspected of being linked to the series of Snowflake data breaches this year.
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This year, 2024, looks set to be the most profitable yet for hackers, with four ransom demands paid in the tens of millions of dollars.
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COSN (2024 STATE OF EDTECH DISTRICT LEADERSHIP SURVEY)
EdTech Leaders are … challenged by persistent problems such as hurdles to hiring qualified IT talent, issues of student home internet and device access, funding cliffs as pandemic funds expire, and enormous threats of cybersecurity attacks,” according to the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) 2024 State of Edtech District Leadership survey and accompanying report on the survey. “This survey—now in its 11th year—provides an opportunity for EdTech Leaders, who are often siloed within their own district, to benchmark their efforts or simply see what others are doing. It also is valuable to superintendents, school boards, and business officers as they determine priorities and budgets to address these challenges.”
Key Findings:Artificial Intelligence (AI). EdTech Leaders recognize that AI has potential risks and benefits. The overwhelming majority (97%) see benefits in how AI can positively impact education and over a third (35%) of districts report having a generative AI initiative.
Cybersecurity. Cybersecurity remains the top concern for EdTech Leaders, with 99% of districts taking measures to improve protections. While this is a bleak situation given the challenge, increasingly districts are on a path to implementing many cybersecurity best practices.
Student Well-Being. An overwhelming majority (93%) of districts are using technology solutions designed to address or improve student well-being. Tools for monitoring and reporting bullying and self-harm, as well as tracking student behavior, are common and widely implemented.
Digital Equity. A growing number of districts no longer provide any services to address student home broadband access—31% this year, compared to 19% just two years ago. One clear example is the decline in the number of districts providing hotspots to unconnected students, which from 69% in 2022 to 49% this year.
Interoperability. Most districts are involved in Interoperability initiatives, with the majority partially implemented or in the planning stage. Single Sign-On (SSO) is the most fully implemented interoperability initiative at 43%.
The post Report: CoSN 2024 State of Edtech District Leadership appeared first on EdTech Digest.
Delta and CrowdStrike have locked legal horns, threatening to drag out the aftermath of the worst IT outage in history for months or possibly years.
Each refuses to be blamed for Delta's substantial losses following a global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike suddenly pushing a flawed security update despite Delta and many other customers turning off auto-updates.
CrowdStrike has since given customers more control over updates and made other commitments to ensure an outage of that scale will never happen again, but Delta isn't satisfied. The airline has accused CrowdStrike of willfully causing losses by knowingly deceiving customers by failing to disclose an unauthorized door into their operating systems that enabled the outage.
© Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images News
Prosecutors allege that Redline infected millions of computers around the world since 2020, including several hundred machines at the U.S. Dept. of Defense.
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A tech industry leader shares perspective on charting a course forward.
GUEST COLUMN | by Erik Stromquist
As a Chromebook OEM, CTL sits at the center of the edtech ecosystem. In a single day, I may chat with a district CIO at a business development event, take a support call from a tech director, and interface with the Google ChromeOS team. This gives me a unique perspective on what the industry is talking about—from new technology innovation to IT admin requests.
Lately, I’ve seen a few common threads running through many of our recent conversations: cybersecurity, connectivity, and sustainability. Here is where I see the industry trajectories on all three topics, and how we’re encouraging the industry to work together to solve these common challenges.
School cybersecurity is increasingly under threat. From ransomware attacks to phishing scams, malicious actors increasingly target schools. In fact, according to K12 SIX data, there have been more than 1,600 attacks on schools since 2016, and unfortunately, no one expects it to get any better soon.
Even though we’re not directly involved in this layer of technology, as a Chromebook manufacturer and edtech solution provider, we are increasingly concerned for our customers. We’ve dedicated our company to ChromeOS cloud computing for one simple reason: ChromeOS has never been hacked. It’s the most secure, containerized operating system that provides the most out-of-the-box protection to users.
However, that’s just the protection out of the box. It’s a solid start, but maintaining that high level of security is critical once a device is deployed and used daily. That’s why, although we’re a hardware manufacturer, we’re investigating new partnerships with fellow travelers in this space. We want to help solve our customer’s cybersecurity concerns together. IT admins need to know the best tools and best practices available to help them prevent breaches and protect student and employee data.
It’s Cybersecurity Month, so this concern is top-of-mind for CTL and our customers. In a few weeks we’re bringing together our IT experts, the ChromeOS Team, a grant funding expert, and a phishing training software provider in a webinar to provide a wealth of cybersecurity updates and vital information to the edtech community.
Bridging the digital divide and closing the homework gap are great initiatives that all depend on the availability of connectivity. CTL believes strongly in providing digital access for every student, regardless of home internet status. We were the first to launch an LTE-connected Chromebook in 2018, and in the next several months we’ll be the first to launch 5G connectivity on Chromebooks for LTE-enablement and private wireless network access. This cause is one of our core corporate pillars of innovation.
The recent changes in E-Rate have left a lot of schools wondering how they can provide digital access beyond the school walls to close that homework gap. The FCC recently ruled it would continue to fund connectivity; however, it is exclusively limited to hotspots. Hotspots are certainly one way to deliver connectivity, but what we hear from our customers and large districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District is that they would prefer the FCC remove the hotspot requirement. Hotspots can be problematic for IT directors to roll out and manage – from provisioning the devices to keeping track of them, from frequent battery replacement to preventing unauthorized users. The hotspot is a limiting device, and we’ve written a letter supporting the LAUSD petition to remove the hotspot-only requirement for funding. School IT departments can select the best-connected devices for their populations if the funding transitions to be device-agnostic. For many school districts, deploying LTE-enabled Chromebooks is a single, streamlined solution that significantly reduces the extra device cost and management time.
Looking forward, CTL is most excited about district-wide private wireless networks for schools and the new 5G-enabled Chromebooks we’ll introduce next year. We’re involved in many districts around the country that are seeking to enable digital access for several use cases, including kids in need, rural communities, and even home-insecure students. Providing hardware and digital access for all students is the last mile in finally conquering the digital learning divide and providing true educational equity. We’re excited by the positive impacts on teaching and learning.
With the proliferation of student laptops, the industry has become increasingly concerned about sustainability over the last several years. Questions often arise, and when they do, we work to broaden the conversation beyond the simple recyclability of components. Sure, recycling is important, however, there is so much more we can do. This mission is so core to CTL that we recently became the first Chromebook manufacturer certified as a B Corporation™.
Going forward, CTL postulates that complete circularity in the Chromebook space is not only possible but a mandate. On the manufacturing side, we examine everything from the amount of post-consumer recycled plastic in our products to the to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSc) certification of our boxes as forest-based materials that meet the highest production standards from a sustainably managed forest. We encourage trade-ins once a district is ready to replace some of its fleet. This enables us to provide a rebate on the old devices towards new purchases, but more than that, it enables us to refurbish devices for a second life rather than simply recycling. This keeps components out of landfills longer and provides additional digital teaching and learning access for new use cases, such as loaners, spares, summer school students, and substitute teachers – the list is expansive.
The industry needs partners to help manage the entire lifecycle of Chromebooks and other electronic devices. Working together, we’re excited to see progress in creating innovative sustainability solutions that are great for learning and the planet.
CTL is growing by investing in these three key trends for student and teacher computing: cybersecurity, connectivity, and sustainability. I myself am moving on to a new role here at CTL, where I’ll be putting together the strategies, programs, and partnerships to ensure we solve these challenges and provide greater teaching and learning opportunities for educators and students throughout the next decade. If you have ideas or questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. I’ll be listening.
—
Erik Stromquist is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board at CTL, a mission-driven company empowering success at school and work with innovative cloud-computing products and industry-leading services. Connect with Erik via LinkedIn.
The post The Future of School Computing: Three Top Trends appeared first on EdTech Digest.
Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods is a cloud security solution specifically tailored for technology teams working in the education market. As schools strive to create safe and enriching digital learning environments for students and educators alike, Cloud Monitor stands as the vanguard of cloud security, ensuring data protection and privacy in the ever-evolving edtech space.
At the forefront of innovation, Cloud Monitor harnesses the power of AI-driven technology to provide visibility and control into cloud applications, thereby detecting and thwarting potential security threats. As education embraces the cloud to foster collaborative and flexible learning experiences, safeguarding sensitive student and financial data is critical. Cloud Monitor empowers districts to fulfill their duty of care, securing data while fostering a climate of trust among students, educators, and parents.
Implementing Cloud Monitor is easy, thanks to its user-friendly design and seamless integration with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, it requires minimal training. It’s automated alerts and remediation capabilities enables swift action against any potential breaches, malware attacks, or student safety risks, freeing district technology teams to focus on the million other things they have on their to-do list.
With the ever-evolving data privacy landscape, adhering to industry standards and regulations such as COPPA, FERPA, and a variety of state-level regulations is a must. Cloud Monitor assists districts in maintaining compliance, monitoring data, and detecting policy violations.
Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods is the ultimate guardian of cloud security and safety for K-12 schools, empowering districts to create safe, secure, and compliant cloud learning environments. For these reasons and more, Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods is a Cool Tool Award Winner for “Best Security (Cybersecurity, Student safety) Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.
The post Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods appeared first on EdTech Digest.
When Los Angeles Unified School District launched a districtwide AI chatbot nicknamed “Ed” in March, officials boasted that it represented a revolutionary new tool that was only possible thanks to generative AI — a personal assistant that could point each student to tailored resources and assignments and playfully nudge and encourage them to keep going.
But last month, just a few months after the fanfare of the public launch event, the district abruptly shut down its Ed chatbot, after the company it contracted to build the system, AllHere Education, suddenly furloughed most of its staff citing financial difficulties. The company had raised more than $12 million in venture capital, and its five-year contract with the LA district was for about $6 million over five years, about half of which the company had already been paid.
It’s not yet clear what happened: LAUSD officials declined interview requests from EdSurge, and officials from AllHere did not respond to requests for comment about the company’s future. A statement issued by the school district said “several educational technology companies are interested in acquiring” AllHere to continue its work, though nothing concrete has been announced.
A tech leader for the school district, which is the nation’s second-largest, told the Los Angeles Times that some information in the Ed system is still available to students and families, just not in chatbot form. But it was the chatbot that was touted as the key innovation — which relied on human moderators at AllHere to monitor some of the chatbot’s output who are no longer actively working on the project.
Some edtech experts contacted by EdSurge say that the implosion of the cutting-edge AI tool offers lessons for other schools and colleges working to make use of generative AI. Most of those lessons, they say, center on a factor that is more difficult than many people realize: the challenges of corralling and safeguarding data.
When leaders from AllHere gave EdSurge a demo of the Ed chatbot in March, back when the company seemed thriving and had recently been named to a Time magazine list of the “World’s Top Edtech Companies of 2024,” company leaders were most proud of how the chatbot cut across dozens of tech tools that the school system uses.
“The first job of Ed was, how do you create one unified learning space that brings together all the digital tools, and that eliminates the high number of clicks that otherwise the student would need to navigate through them all?” the company’s then-CEO, Joanna Smith-Griffin, said at the time. (The LAUSD statement said she is no longer with the company.)
Such data integration had not previously been a focus of the company, though. The company’s main expertise was making chatbots that were “designed to mimic real conversations, responding with empathy or humor depending on the student's needs in the moment on an individual level,” according to its website.
Michael Feldstein, a longtime edtech consultant, said that from the first time he heard about the Ed chatbot, he saw the project as too ambitious for a small startup to tackle.
“In order to do the kind of work that they were promising, they needed to gather information about students from many IT systems,” he said. “This is the well-known hard part of edtech.”
Feldstein guesses that to make a chatbot that could seamlessly take data from nearly every critical learning resource at a school, as announced at the splashy press conference in March, it could take 10 times the amount AllHere was being paid.
“There’s no evidence that they had experience as system integrators,” he said of AllHere. “It’s not clear that they had the expertise.”
In fact, a former engineer from AllHere reportedly sent emails to leaders in the school district warning that the company was not handling student data according to best practices of privacy protection, according to an article in The 74, the publication that first reported the implosion of AllHere. The official, Chris Whiteley, reportedly told state and district officials that the way the Ed chatbot handled student records put the data at risk of getting hacked. (The school district’s statement defends its privacy practices, saying that: “Throughout the development of the Ed platform, Los Angeles Unified has closely reviewed the platform to ensure compliance with applicable privacy laws and regulations, as well as Los Angeles Unified’s own data security and privacy policies, and AllHere is contractually obligated to do the same.”)
LAUSD’s data systems have recently faced breaches that appear unrelated to the Ed chatbot project. Last month hackers claimed to be selling troves of millions of records from LAUSD on the dark web for $1,000. And a data breach of a data warehouse provider used by LAUSD, Snowflake, claims to have snatched records of millions of students, including from the district. A more recent breach of Snowflake may have affected LAUSD or other tech companies it works with as well.
“LAUSD maintains an enormous amount of sensitive data. A breach of an integrated data system of LAUSD could affect a staggering number of individuals,” said Doug Levin, co-founder and national director of the K12 Security Information eXchange, in an email interview. He said he is waiting for the district to share more information about what happened. “I am mostly interested in understanding whether any of LAUSD’s edtech vendors were breached and — if so — if other customers of those vendors are at risk,” he said. “This would make it a national issue.”
Meanwhile, what happens to all the student data in the Ed chatbot?
According to the statement released by LAUSD: “Any student data belonging to the District and residing in the Ed platform will continue to be subject to the same privacy and data security protections, regardless of what happens to AllHere as a company.”
A copy of the contract between AllHere and LAUSD, obtained by EdSurge under a public records request, does indicate that all data from the project “will remain the exclusive property of LAUSD.” And the contract contains a provision stating that AllHere “shall delete a student’s covered information upon request of the district.”
Related document: Contract between LAUSD and AllHere Education.Rob Nelson, executive director for academic technology and planning at the University of Pennsylvania, said the situation does create fresh risks, though.
“Are they taking appropriate technical steps to make sure that data is secure and there won’t be a breach or something intentional by an employee?” Nelson wondered.
James Wiley, a vice president at the education market research firm ListEdTech, said he would have advised AllHere to seek a partner with experience wrangling and managing data.
When he saw a copy of the contract between the school district and AllHere, he said his reaction was, “Why did you sign up for this?,” adding that “some of the data you would need to do this chatbot isn’t even called out in the contract.”
Wiley said that school officials may not have understood how hard it was to do the kind of data integration they were asking for. “I think a lot of times schools and colleges don’t understand how complex their data structure is,” he added. “And you’re assuming a vendor is going to come in and say, ‘It’s here and here.’” But he said it is never that simple.
“Building the Holy Grail of a data-informed, personalized achievement tool is a big job,” he added. “It’s a noble cause, but you have to realize what you have to do to get there.”
For him, the biggest lesson for other schools and colleges is to take a hard look at their data systems before launching a big AI project.
“It’s a cautionary tale,” he concluded. “AI is not going to be a silver bullet here. You’re still going to have to get your house in order before you bring AI in.”
To Nelson, of the University of Pennsylvania, the larger lesson in this unfolding saga is that it’s too soon in the development of generative AI tools to scale up one idea to a whole school district or college campus.
Instead of one multimillion-dollar bet, he said, “let’s invest $10,000 in five projects that are teacher-based, and then listen to what the teachers have to say about it and learn what these tools are going to do well.”
© Thomas Bethge / Shutterstock
Hoe verder we digitaliseren, hoe meer data we online hebben staan. Vorig jaar zei 89% van de Nederlanders van 12 jaar of ouder maatregelen te treffen om die data te beschermen. Zij nemen diverse soorten stappen voor databescherming, zoals het beperken van toegang tot profielgegevens op sociale media en de veiligheid van websites controleren.
Het aantal mensen in de Nederlandse bevolking dat maatregelen neemt om zijn online data te beschermen, is vorig jaar iets gestegen. Waar dat in 2023 89% was, was dat in 2021 nog 82%, blijkt uit cijfers van het CBS. Nederlanders beperken nu vooral vaker toegang tot profielgegevens: 70,3% doet dat nu, tegenover 54,8% in 2021.
De meest genomen maatregel is echter nog altijd het beperken van toegang tot locatiegegevens, wat 77,9% nu doet. De minst genomen maatregel is het laten verwijderen van gegevens: slechts 14,2% van de Nederlanders deed dat in 2023.
Bron: CBS
De cijfers van het CBS laten flinke verschillen tussen leeftijdscategorieën zien wat betreft databescherming. Van de groep Nederlanders tussen de 12 en 65 jaar is 93% actief bezig met het beschermen van zijn persoonlijke informatie. Zeker de groep tussen de 18 en 25 jaar doet veel aan databescherming. In die groep gaat het om maar liefst 95,8%.
Onder ouderen is echter een heel ander beeld zichtbaar. Van de Nederlanders tussen de 65 en 75 jaar is 84,8% actief bezig met databescherming. Onder 75-plussers is dat zelfs maar 60%. Maar dit kan natuurlijk ook te maken hebben met dat ouderen überhaupt minder vaak op het internet zitten dan jongeren en daar dus ook minder persoonlijke data hebben staan.
Over het algemeen genomen is Nederland wel koploper in de beveiliging van persoonsgegevens op het internet. Gemiddeld neemt slechts 67% van de Europeanen maatregelen om zin data te beschermen. In Nederland heeft tegelijkertijd ook het grootste aantal mensen toegang tot het internet in Europa, namelijk 81%.
Lees 9 op de 10 Nederlanders neemt stappen om persoonlijke data op internet te beschermen verder op Numrush
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