U.S. district schools are facing a surge in sophisticated cyberattacks, but districts are pushing back by combining strong fundamentals, people-centered training, state partnerships, and community resilience planning to build cyber safety into everyday culture .
Rising threat landscape
An Arizona district’s 2024 near-miss shows how fast attacks unfold and why incident response planning and EDR matter; swift VPN cutoff and state-provided CrowdStrike support helped prevent damage during a live intrusion window of mere hours .
Broader data from the 2025 CIS MS-ISAC K-12 report underscores the scale: 82% of reporting schools experienced cyber impacts between July 2023 and December 2024, with more than 9,300 confirmed incidents, reflecting increased adversary sophistication and strategic timing against educational operations . Districts hold sensitive student and family data, making identity theft, fraud, and extortion high-risk outcomes from breaches .