Back-to-School Cybersecurity Checklist: Key Security, AI, & Privacy Topics to Review Before the School Year Starts

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Written by: Scott Morris

As students, faculty, and staff return to classrooms, campuses, and online learning environments, educational institutions face a familiar but increasingly complex challenge: managing cyber risk in an environment that relies heavily on technology, cloud services, artificial intelligence, and vast amounts of sensitive information.

School districts and higher education institutions remain attractive targets for cybercriminals because they store valuable student, employee, financial, healthcare, and research data while often operating with constrained budgets and decentralized technology environments. Federal agencies continue to emphasize that educational organizations are frequent targets of phishing, ransomware, and data breach activity, making proactive preparation more important than ever.

At The Beckage Firm, we often remind clients that cybersecurity is not simply an IT issue. It is also a legal, governance, privacy, compliance, and risk management issue that requires ongoing, active involvement from leadership. As educational institutions prepare for the upcoming academic year, below are some top questions to answer.

Is Your Incident Response Plan Ready for AI and the New School Year?

Many organizations have an incident response plan. Far fewer have validated that the plan will work when they need it most.

Having worked with countless schools, we know the beginning of the academic year often brings new devices, new users, new applications, and increased network activity. With the explosion of AI-assisted tools and apps, risks of shadow IT, AI enabled threats, and new AI and privacy laws – reviewing the plan is key before school starts.

School leaders should treat their incident response plans as living documents and annually, at a minimum, review whether their plan addresses current technologies, cloud platforms, third-party vendors, communications procedures, and legal notification requirements and update it accordingly. Just as importantly, decision-making authority should be clearly documented before an incident occurs, including leadership roles and authority if systems become unavailable.

Institutions should also confirm that emergency contact lists, cyber insurance information, legal counsel contacts, and incident response vendors remain current.

Who Is Responsible for Cybersecurity During a School or University Data Breach?

One of the most common challenges during a cyber incident is uncertainty regarding ownership and decision-making.

When a ransomware attack or data breach occurs, technology teams cannot operate in isolation. Effective response requires timely coordination among executive leadership, legal counsel, communications teams, human resources, business operations, and risk management personnel.

Educational organizations should identify:

• Who has authority to declare a cyber incident?
• Who communicates with parents, students, faculty, and staff?
• Who coordinates with law enforcement and regulators?
• Who makes decisions regarding downtime, recovery, and public disclosure?

If possible, there should be primary and secondary persons for each of those roles.  Recent higher education cybersecurity discussions have increasingly focused on governance and organizational accountability rather than purely technical controls.

Clear accountability before a crisis can significantly reduce confusion during one.

Through incident response planning and tabletop exercises, The Beckage Firm helps leadership teams clarify who makes key decisions before an actual breach occurs.

Do We Need All of This Data?

Educational institutions often collect and retain data for years, sometimes decades. The result is that many organizations no longer have complete visibility into what information they possess or where it resides. It may be on external devices, legacy systems, or with third parties.

A critical question for educational leaders is whether they know what data they must protect and what data they no longer need to keep. This includes student records, employee information, financial data, and special education records. If there is not a legal obligation to store it, and no educational purpose to keep it, then can it be removed?

Data inventories and retention reviews should be priorities before the academic year begins. Institutions should identify:

• Sensitive student records
• Employee and payroll information
• Health-related information
• Research data
• Financial information
• Alumni and donor records

Schools should also review the terms of third party contracts with vendors that process such information to address new data collection, AI processing of data, and record retention and disposal obligations.

Reducing unnecessary data retention can lower both compliance obligations and legal risk and exposure during a cybersecurity incident. Many organizations take longer to stand back up after an incident because they simply have too much data, and often significant amounts of unnecessary data. Organizations cannot effectively protect information they do not understand or track.

How Are We Planning for and Addressing AI?

Artificial intelligence is transforming education, but it is also expanding the ways data security, privacy, and legal risks can arise across school and university environments.

The Beckage Firm is seeing more threat actors use AI to generate convincing phishing emails, impersonate trusted individuals, create fraudulent documents, and automate social engineering attacks. Educational institutions also need to consider how AI tools are being adopted internally, including risks involving sensitive data entered into prompts, unclear data retention practices, AI-generated identities, deepfakes, and AI-assisted deception campaigns.

Educational institutions should evaluate:

• Updates to laws concerning security, privacy, and AI
• AI governance policies
• Acceptable-use standards for generative AI tools
• Verification procedures for financial and administrative requests
• Enhanced phishing awareness training
• Monitoring for unusual account activity
• Cyber insurance and Tech E&O coverage
• Supply chain risk/contractual requirements

The important question for institutions is no longer whether AI will affect cybersecurity. The question is whether cybersecurity, privacy, and governance programs are adapting quickly enough to manage both AI-enabled threats and the internal use of AI tools.

The Beckage Firm also helps schools and universities develop AI governance, acceptable-use, verification, and policy frameworks that support innovation while reducing legal, privacy, and security risk.

Are Your Vendors Creating Hidden Cybersecurity and Privacy Risks?

Modern education depends heavily on third-party technology providers, not only traditional EdTech tools.

Learning management systems, student information systems, testing platforms, collaboration tools, research software, cloud services, payment systems, security platforms, and AI-enabled applications can all introduce additional risk.

Effective privacy governance requires vendor assessments, privacy reviews, and the integration of cybersecurity requirements into procurement and contract review processes.

Before the academic year begins, institutions should evaluate with legal counsel and IT teams:

• Which student or employee data vendors can access
• Security requirements included in contracts
• Vendor incident notification obligations
• Data retention practices
• Third-party risk management procedures

Educational organizations are increasingly held accountable not only for their own security practices but also for the practices of vendors entrusted with institutional data.

Did You Perform An Annual Tabletop Exercise and PEN Test?

Plans that have never been tested rarely perform as expected during a crisis, and technical assumptions that have never been validated can create a false sense of security.

A common saying is that an untested plan is a hope, not a plan. Incident response plans are valuable, but exercising them is essential. Regular testing helps confirm that written procedures align with real-world decision-making, communications, and recovery needs. Penetration (PEN) testing and other technical assessments can complement tabletop exercises by helping institutions identify vulnerabilities before they are exploited.

Tabletop exercises and technical testing can help organizations evaluate:

• Compliance with legal obligations
• Leadership decision-making
• Regulatory reporting
• Internal communications
• Parent and community notification procedures
• Vendor coordination
• Law enforcement engagement
• Recovery planning

• Network, application, and identity-related vulnerabilities that may require remediation

When the team members at The Beckage Firm perform these exercises and assessments, we find that they frequently reveal gaps that would otherwise remain hidden until a real-world incident occurs or an attacker identifies the weakness first. The Beckage Firm’s tabletop exercises and technical assessments often reveal governance, legal, communication, vendor, and recovery gaps that may otherwise remain hidden until a real-world incident occurs.

For educational institutions, testing should involve both technology personnel and institutional leadership to ensure all stakeholders understand their responsibilities.

Is Cybersecurity Training Scheduled for Faculty, Staff, and Students?

Technology alone cannot eliminate cyber risk.

Federal guidance consistently identifies training and security awareness as foundational cybersecurity controls. Phishing attacks remain one of the most common methods used to compromise educational organizations.

Educational institutions should provide training that addresses:

• Phishing and social engineering
• Password security and multi-factor authentication
• Data handling responsibilities
• AI-enabled scams and impersonation attempts
• Incident reporting procedures
• Social engineering risks

A strong cybersecurity culture helps transform every faculty member, employee, and student into an active participant in risk reduction.

Back to School Checklist

Cybersecurity readiness is ultimately a leadership responsibility.

The strongest lesson from recent incidents is that organizations that respond effectively are rarely those with the most technology. They are the organizations that prepared in advance, defined responsibilities, understood their data, vetted vendors, practiced response procedures, and established accountability.

As the academic year begins, educational leaders should prioritize:

1. Is your incident response plan ready for AI and the new school year?

2. Who is responsible for cybersecurity during a school or university data breach?
3. Do we need all of this data?
4. How are we planning for and addressing AI?
5. Are your vendors creating hidden cybersecurity and privacy risks?
6. Did you perform an annual tabletop exercise and PEN test?
7. Is cybersecurity training scheduled for faculty, staff, and students?

The Beckage Firm regularly finds that these efforts are shelved by organizations when times are busy. Putting it on the calendar is key.

The strongest cyber defense is not simply technology. It is preparation, legal risk compliance and risk mitigation, governance, and leadership. Educational institutions that ask these questions now will be significantly better positioned to navigate the cybersecurity and privacy challenges that inevitably arise throughout the school year.

Contact The Beckage Firm to review this checklist, evaluate your current cybersecurity, AI, privacy, vendor, and incident response readiness, and help ensure your school is prepared before the academic year is fully underway.