K12 Tech Talk

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...

Chis is off napping somewhere so it is the Mark and Josh show. They recap the recently released " CoSN 2023 State of EdTech Leadership Survey " that was released this week.  They go over 11 key findings and trends that came out of the study.  Some might surprised you. Mark talks about figured out how to block international logins to Google Workspace accounts. Hint - he made a full writeup on the K...

We quickly talk about the SchoolDude breach and Keepass's newly announced CVE. The majority of the episode is an interview with Lucas from PIRG. Lucas is the author of the study we referenced a few weeks ago in the episode "Chromebooks are Evil?." The study looks at "Chromebook Churn" and e-waste created by device usage. After that episode a few weeks ago, Lucas reached out to us to clarify a few...

🎶Together and it feels so good...🎵 We are all together for the first time at the New Hampshire CTO Clinic! First and foremost, we thank Barbara and the committee for inviting us and making the trip possible - We had a blast! We got to hang out with the fine folks of the "Live Free or Die" State and talk all things K12 technology. The key topics were cybersecurity and data privacy. We had a chanc...

This is a bit of a special episode. We are in New Hampshire for the NHCTO Clinic, so we prerecorded a few interviews. The first interview you will hear is with Andrew and George from Lakota Local School District. George is a student in high school and is completing their Cyber Academy program and gaining Industry Recognized Certificates (Including Security+ and CEH pro). This has opened doors for...

Mark is worked up this week, but first... Chris asks us how to keep printers from getting to bad websites, we talk about the big PaperCut vulnerability announced last week, we compare Chris' personality and mannerisms to Ted Lasso, we talk about the new pending Federal Legislation to enhance K12 Cyber Security, and Mark talks about Domain Doppelgänger from KnowBe4. The majority of this episode is...

In this episode, Josh is really confused about the artist known as SZA and CISA, Mark reads a listener email, Chris talks about the tabletop exercise he did with his district administration team, and the guys banter about Missouri's proposed Senate Bill 4 that could affect website access. Listen here (and on all major podcast platforms). Join the K12TechPro.com Community. Buy our merch!!! Absolute...

We have a number of listener emails that we address tonight. One is about shutting down SIS during off hours in an effort to protect it from attacks, one is about the Chrome net-export exploit, and the final one is about our retrospective on the COVID Years. We talk about CISA's new tabletop exercise template and how it would be fun to treat like it D&D: School Edition. We also talk about Black Hi...

In this episode, the guys talk about key things to keep in mind when working with vendors to get Student Data Privacy Agreements signed. They also talk about the Clever outage on 4/6/2023. Josh also talks Chris into changing a Google Admin WiFi setting while riding in the car. Listen here (and on all major podcast platforms). Join the K12TechPro.com Community. Buy our merch!!! Absolute - Email osc...

Chris is back after a suspension and traveling to the CoSN conference. He recaps some of the discussion and overall trending topics from the CoSN conference. He also discusses the fact that he did not appreciate Eric the Intern's love for walking everywhere in Austin (and other Eric antics). Josh talks about the 3CX phone system vulnerability that was published 3/29/2023 by CrowdStrike and Red Can...

On this special episode (brought to you by ClassLink), Chris and Eric the Intern take a trip to Austin and spend the week at the CoSN conference! Because they interviewed so many and got such good content, we’ll be breaking this into two parts. You’ll hear from:   -Eric Nicklas, Program Manager, MOREnet -Don Ringelestein, CTO, Maine Township High School District 207, CoSN Board -Evangelina Mendoza...

On this special episode (brought to you by ClassLink), Chris and Eric the Intern take a trip to Austin and spend the week at the CoSN conference! Because they interviewed so many and got such good content, we’ll be breaking this into two parts. You’ll hear from:   -Eric Nicklas, Program Manager, MOREnet -Don Ringelestein, CTO, Maine Township High School District 207, CoSN Board -Evangelina Mendoza...

In tonight's episode Josh, Mark, and Eric the Intern chat about CISA's new K12 Cyber Report and their 3 fundamental items that all districts should be tackling... *hint, hint* one is MFA. Josh talks about his 3 internet outages that took place in the last 10 days and how that is causing him to look at backup WAN connections. The guys also spend time talking about the 3 year anniversary of when sch...

Chris is on leave again this week, so Mark and Josh do their best to proceed without him.   Mark recaps the K12 SIX Conference that was held in Austin, Texas. Josh talks about trying to change a SSID over to WPA3 and it did not go well. They also talk about a new method students are using to attempt to crack WPA2 passphrases on Chromebooks using the chrome://net-export page. The majority of this e...

This is the second part of the interview with Soheil Katal, the CIO for LAUSD. In Episode 108 Interview Part One, we set the stage and talk through the first few days of the cyber incident that took place in September 2022. Go back and listen to Part One if you have not already. In this episode Soheil talks about bringing in the FBI and how their goal was not necessarily the same goal that Soheil...

In part one of our exclusive 2-part interview on K12 Tech Talk, we sat down with Soheil Katal, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Los Angeles School District, to discuss the recent ransomware attack that rocked the district's systems and caused disruption for students and staff alike. Katal shared his firsthand account of the impact of the attack and the challenges of trying to restore the dis...

BIG NEWS! In this episode, we set up Episode 108, an interview with Soheil Katal, the CIO of Los Angeles Unified School District. We are pretty certain this is the first one on one interview he has given, and we got it! As you can tell, we're excited. But first, in this episode, we mention a cheating scandal at a High School in Florida that involves... you guessed it... everyone's favorite AI bot,...

Our influx of listener emails continues, and we field a question about esports, one about recovering from COVID challenges, and we say G'day to a listener from Australia. We also spend a good amount of time talking about rolling out MFA requirements and a few settings in Google Admin Console that might make that rollout easier. We also talk about some upcoming conferences that "we" will be attendi...

We had so many listener emails that we can't get to them all this week. We will save a few for next week, but keep 'em coming! A few weeks ago, we talked about Sh1mmer, the new shim package that was released that allowed individuals to remove Chromebooks from Google Admin Console, etc. We received an email from the group who developed Sh1mmer and they wanted to clarify some items that we got wrong...