D20 students learn how to prevent cyber incidents and network outages

COLORADO SPRINGS — October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This month, Academy School District 20 (D20) is helping students secure their personal information.

With over 26,000 devices like laptops spread across the district, cyber incidents can easily happen.

Compromised passwords or unauthorized software downloads could lead to network shutdown.

This means that no one has access to the Internet.

“(Compromises and downloads occur) on average between 5 and 10 per day,” said Shelley Kooser, D20’s chief information officer.

Each week this month, students learned the importance of having a strong password and how to avoid falling for phishing scams.

“The goal is to make sure we can continue to learn, we don’t want to shut down the network,” Kooser said.

Kooser said there have been fewer password compromises and unauthorized downloads since the start of the month.

Two Pine Creek High School students use their laptops daily at school and at home.

“I always do research on the files I download just to be safe,” Joseph Deno said.

“Everyone uses email, everyone has a password, everyone has an online banking account. So that’s an important thing that you want to protect because you don’t want people to get that information ” Smith Barrionuevo said.

The D20 experienced an outage over the summer and another at the end of last school year.

Kooser said the IT team has strengthened digital protections.

“If they download something, that’s obviously against policy, however, we’ve taken steps so that we quarantine that and it won’t get on their device,” Kooser said.

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