The Learning Counsel: 3 Steps to a Robust Zero-Trust Architecture in K-12 Schools This Year

The Learning Counsel: 3 Steps to a Robust Zero-Trust Architecture in K-12 Schools This Year
This article was originally published in The Learning Counsel on 11/5/25 by Charlie Sander.It’s 2025-11-12 12:24:0 Author: securityboulevard.com(查看原文) 阅读量:10 收藏

This article was originally published in The Learning Counsel on 11/5/25 by Charlie Sander.

It’s time for district leaders to turn your attention to cybersecurity strategy

As the buzz around back-to-school season subsides and teachers and students fall into the rhythm of a new academic year, it’s time for K-12 administrators and district leaders to turn their attention to cybersecurity strategy.

Throughout 2025, we saw an onslaught of cyberattacks against K-12 school networks. Schools and universities were the third-most victimized industry by cybercriminals in 2024, while the 2025 State of K-12 Cybersecurity report found that 82 percent of 5,000 schools surveyed had experienced some type of cyber incident between July 2023 and December 2024.

A zero-trust architecture isn’t a product or service but an approach to cybersecurity that assumes that all network traffic has the potential to be hostile, no matter the source or location.

Charlie Sander, Chairman & CEO, ManagedMethods

Thanks to the wealth of sensitive data at play coupled with budgets that pale in comparison to those in enterprise organizations, schools are a prime target. This means schools are facing an uphill battle against cyberattacks that get more sophisticated each year.

According to the 2024 Sophos State of Ransomware in Education, 26 percent of

started with a phishing email, with the median recovery cost skyrocketing to $3 million USD.

Yet phishing emails used to be a fairly benign threat that could be managed through detection tools and staff training. The spike in success stemming from phishing emails shows us that this approach no longer works.

Tight budgets and the rush of back-to-school preparations mean that training on cybersecurity principles and best practices might not take place at all. A recent report from the FDD noted that some teachers “received no training to change shared default passwords on their devices and management systems.”

Yet even the most conscientious user who follows cybersecurity training to a ‘T’ would find it hard to spot an email with malicious intent thanks to the rise of contextual AI. Bad actors use sophisticated, socially engineered emails to impersonate trusted sources like administrators, vendors, and even students and parents in order to steal credentials, deploy ransomware, or trick staff into wiring funds.

This underscores why a zero trust architecture should be a non-negotiable for K-12 school districts. This is an approach to building a cybersecurity strategy based on the principle foundation of “never trust, always verify.”

Mitigating the growing threat of cyberattacks isn’t just about implementing a zero-trust architecture in K-12 schools in 2025. It’s about how schools can keep those defenses continuously updated and effective.

Here are the three key stages K-12 schools need to maintain an effective, zero-trust architecture in 2025 on a budget.

The importance of KPIs and benchmarks

A zero-trust architecture isn’t a product or service but an approach to cybersecurity that assumes that all network traffic has the potential to be hostile, no matter the source or location.

As a result, user verification is a core part of the strategy. Multi-layered authentication should be implemented to verify every access request and data should be encrypted and controlled to limit the severity of any future breaches.

However, schools may struggle to follow these stringent guidelines without impeding on the daily tasks of teachers and administrators who need to access student files, print records or connect new devices to deliver a lesson.

This is why KPIs and benchmarks are an effective way to maintain a zero-trust architecture with a limited IT team. For instance, straightforward benchmarks include the use of multifactor authentication tokens, percentage of completed security updates, presence of compliance requirements and scalability to support remote and hybrid teaching environments. They should be outcome-centric, tied to risk mitigation or business enablement for schools, rather than abstract security metrics…