K12 SIX Statement on the Ransomware Attack Against LAUSD

The second largest school district in the U.S., Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), recently announced that it was the victim of a ransomware attack. This incident is the latest and most high-profile of the thousands of cyber incidents suffered by schools in recent years.

Schools rely on technology not only for teaching and learning, but for the myriad operational and administrative tasks with which they are charged. Despite the increasingly sensitive information for which districts are responsible, K-12 cybersecurity risk management has not kept pace with the threat landscape—and it is students, families, and educators that are paying the price.

While there are no shortcuts to cybersecurity resilience, “one of the best techniques to address [the sophistication of Advanced Persistent Threats] is for organizations to share threat information,” according to the NIST Cyber Security Framework.

To that end, the non-profit K12 Security Information eXchange (K12 SIX) was launched in late 2020 to serve as a K-12-specific information sharing and analysis center (ISAC). The community acts as a forum for peer-to-peer and analyst enriched cyberthreat intelligence exchange. It enables school districts and other K-12 organizations to prevent and mitigate cyber incidents stemming from malicious insiders, cybercriminals, hacktivists, and nation-state actors. Serving school districts from coast-to-coast, K12 SIX members work together to confidentially share warnings and provide support, best practices, and advice. Member districts are backed by K12 SIX analysts who enrich intelligence and provide value-added information from the government, law enforcement, security vendors, ISACs, and other trusted sources.

Given resource constraints facing school districts, it is imperative that a mindset of collective defense be adopted. K12 SIX offers district IT professionals the unique opportunity to collaborate with a vetted and secure community of their peers, committed to a common cause—backed by the resources of the cross-sector Global Resilience Federation network of sharing communities. To learn more, including about how school districts and other eligible K-12 organizations can join K12 SIX, visit https://k12six.org.