K12 Tech Talk

In this episode, hosts Josh, Chris, and Mark dissect the latest in educational tech, covering the CRDC's revealing report on student tech access and the FCC's $200M cybersecurity pilot for K-12 schools. Listener emails bring forward challenges from the K12sysadmin subreddit, exploring the purpose in K-12 tech work. The main topic dives into managing student accounts, discussing GAM tools, password...

We had a really nice agenda worked up for this episode, but right before we hit record, Mark dropped a bomb... Eventually, we got to the following agenda... In the latest episode of the K12 Tech Talk Podcast, Josh, Chris, and Mark discuss various news stories including an update on the recent data breaches in Jefferson County, CO and Clark County. They also mention the Okta breach caused by an emp...

In the latest episode of the K12 Tech Talk Podcast, co-hosts Josh, Chris, and Mark discuss their Halloween plans in the intro segment. In the news segment, they highlight two major data breaches, including hackers stealing student data from Clark County and directly emailing parents, as well as a data breach in Philadelphia that went unnoticed for five months. They also address a listener's questi...

Sorry for the delay. We had major audio/video issues with our recording platform. Also, due to that issue, only audio again this week. In the latest episode of the K12 Tech Talk Podcast, hosts Josh, Chris, and Mark discuss several news stories related to technology in schools. They start by covering the ban on facial recognition technology in NYC schools, as well as the concerns raised by the ACLU...

Eric recounts the story of how his district was hit with ransomware in 2019 but narrowly escaped a major cyber attack. He describes the early days of the attack, including the response from his team and district, and then recounts how they recovered with only a very small grazing from the attack. His story is filled with lessons learned from the incident, including things they should have done bef...

In the latest episode of the K12 Tech Talk Podcast, co-host Chris shares an update on his SIS implementation struggles, highlighting some mistakes along the way. In the news segment, they discuss a recent ransomware attack on 14 Pinal County school districts and the shift towards data exfiltration in cyber threats. The main topic revolves around the MORENET conference, where AI was a major focus....

In this episode, Mark and Josh sit down with the Godfather of Student Data Privacy, Steve Smith. Steve tells us how student data privacy became "a thing" for his district 15 years ago due to questions from parents, and it morphed into a national organization. He offers tips and pointers on how to get started if your district has not jumped into the seemingly wild waters of SDPA's. Then, Chris and...

In this special episode we pay tribute to Pate Hogan, a special friend of the K12 Tech Talk Podcast. Pate appeared on the podcast multiple times over the last few years and we wanted to share some of our favorite moments with Pate.   Thank you for the laughs and memories, Pate.

Chris starts the episode with a story about his bad day, talks for 10 minutes, then Mark realizes he didn't press the record button. For the remainder of the episode, Chris is mad at Mark and upset with the day he's had. He does attempt to tell the story again. The guys discuss 3 listener emails and the following: Google fixes fifth actively exploited Chrome zero-day of 2023 Cisco patches zero-day...

Mark, Josh, and Chris discuss two listener emails, Google's third party apps, Google's 10 year announcement on Chromebooks, and they talk at length about contracts, terms of service, and how to handle agreements. Listen Here or on all major pod platforms Join the  K12TechPro.com Community. Buy our merch!!! SomethingCool.com Extreme Networks - Email dmayer@extremenetworks.com Fortinet - Email forti...

This is a special episode - We sat down with Alaina Clark, the Assistant Director of Stakeholder Engagement at CISA. We were very happy she agreed to come on and chat with us about all things CISA. She talked about what CISA can help your district accomplish related to your cyber posture, the White House event, and the newly announced Secure By Design Initiative for K12 . We really appreciate the...

Every week we say this, but here we go again... It's been a rough few days for Mark and Josh. Mark started school this week and is tired and worn. From power outages to heatwaves, Mark experienced it during his first day of school. Josh had 3 days in a row with major SIS outages ranging from a half day to 20 minutes. This caused him to edit his incident response plan and work through plans for att...

This is a wild one. We start out recapping our first two weeks of school, but quickly realize Josh is doing all the talking.  We talk about a few news stories of cyber incidents at school districts in Connecticut and Maryland. While talking about these incidents, Mark takes offense that Josh and Chris thought Maryland was considered a New England state. The majority of this episode is spent on a t...

It was past Josh's bed time when this episode was recorded, so he let's Mark do all the talking. Mark shows off his Google Sheet skills by walking us through the CIS controls, specifically IG1. IG1 was mentioned at the White House Convening on K12 Cybersecurity a few weeks ago and we thought it was a good idea to delve into what that means and how to get started with implementation. Mark also talk...

In this episode, we are happy to have a special guest with us, Josh from New Hampshire AKA "The Other Josh." He was one of approximately 15 K12 CIO's invited to last week's White House Convening. Josh gives us a bit of a behind the scenes look at everything from the e-vite to the event itself. We also have more "hot takes" on what we want to see from Google and other big players in the K12 product...

In this episode, Chris recaps his trip to the Annual ISAC Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah last week. We talk about a new Papercut Vulnerability , a study that shows 47% of schools paid ransom groups , and Zoom's abrupt change to their TOS and Privacy Policy to include AI training. However, the majority of this episode is about the White House convening that took place this week. They brought in...

In this episode, Chris leads us off with sad stories about storms, power outages, dead UPSs, and dead servers. Mark leads us in a discussion about a new report from CISA titled " 2022 Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities ." It is an interesting report on the top leveraged vulnerabilities for 2022 and methods to mitigate. Josh doesn't have any stories, but he talks A LOT. Listen here (and on all...

The guys discuss the woes of new employees, employees changing positions, and employees leaving. They do a couple listener emails and discuss K12TechPro. Oh, and they try out a LIVE STREAM of the podcast via K12TechPro (more of that coming down the road probably!). Finally, Chris gives a bit more clarity on the vetting roadmap of K12TechPro and the k12sysadmin subreddit. Listen here (and on all ma...

We are tired and worn out! Mark and Chris spent the early part of the week at MidwestTechTalk and they are worn out. Josh is tired from working a full week after being gone for 2 weeks to ALASKA. Mark and Chris recap the MidwestTechTalk conference and Mark shares his observations about Missouri. We talk about the recent Class Action Lawsuit filed against Securly alleging that they sold student dat...

In this episode, Josh talks about Alaska. The guys talk about other things too, but mostly Josh talks about Alaska. Chris was probably supposed to post some additional links in the description, but he doesn't remember them... he only remembers Josh talking about Alaska. FCC Announcement about Cyber Security Funding AI generated images for every state (article referenced during the episode) Listen...

This is a special episode. We interview Christy Wyatt, the CEO of Absolute. Listen here (and on all major podcast platforms). Join the  K12TechPro.com Community. K12 Tech Talk Absolute Resource Links Absolute Research Reports Absolute for Education/K12 Oh, and... Email us at  k12techtalk@gmail.com Tweet us  @k12techtalkpod Visit our  LinkedIn page HERE  

Chris, Josh, and Mark discuss the recent news that Fairfax County Public Schools sent teachers an appreciation email that ended up being a phishing test ( Washington Post article ), and they debate on if it was right or wrong to do. Too far maybe? Chris talks about setting up restricted Google access as well as doing the "under 18 third party apps" Google stuff, and the articles about both on K12T...

In this episode, we talk about the MoveIT vulnerability and the recent Fortinet SSL VPN vulnerability. The majority of the episode is spent covering the various versions of MFA, including a deep dive into what Passkeys are. If you are a Google Workspace school district, you should take note and enable the option for Passkey MFA. We talk about disabling IMAP for Gmail as a step to enhance email sec...

Josh is on vacation, so it's the Chris and Mark Show! We discuss Microsoft OneDrive being down , the upcoming MidwestTechTalk conference, and most of the episode is spent taking the K12 Six cybersecurity self-assessment . Listen here (and on all major podcast platforms). Join the  K12TechPro.com Community. Buy our merch!!! Managed Methods - free Google Workspace and/or Microsoft 365 security audit...

In this episode, we talk about the possibility of requiring Student MFA (thanks to a k12sysadmin post ). We also talk about Chris prepping for his network admin to retire and the "brain dump" process they are undertaking. Finally, we talk about the recently announced change to "3rd Party Apps" authentication with Google SSO. This change takes effect on October 23rd, 2023 and will cause issues. The...