Q&A: North Carolina’s Technology Leader for Schools Works to Level the Playing Field

EDTECH: As a state-level CIO for public schools, tell us how your office levels the playing field for schools of all types and sizes.

WRENN: When I started out as a technology director, you had to solve for a lot of challenges on your own, such as your learning management system, online course content or security solutions.  Today, part of my role is ensuring that we’ve got the appropriate systems in place for all of our schools to safely operate in the digital space.

In some states, the quality of resources a school gets access to depends on how wealthy the local area is. But through my office, I can level the playing field for teachers, students and parents because, wherever you live in North Carolina, there is a baseline of digital tools that you are going to be provided. So, things such as the student grade book and the parent portal, we provide those things for our schools throughout the state.

Certainly, these are tools that we’ve been able to provide due to state-level funding. It’s been a game changer for our schools.

EDTECH: How does that extend to cybersecurity?

WRENN: We have also stood up some cybersecurity managed services for all of our schools at no cost to them. One of these is a cybersecurity training, and we’ve ramped it up a little bit for people who are leading technology in the schools.

Then, we provide a fully managed next-generation firewall, and that is managed 24/7, 365 days a year. We also provide advanced endpoint protection to our schools and a network asset discovery tool, so they can see what is connecting to their networks.

This comes from our state general assembly, which has provided the funding for these services to our schools.

DIVE DEEPER: Schools with small IT staffs and budgets call in backup.

EDTECH: Ransomware has become very prevalent, often forcing schools to pay to get back access to their data. How is North Carolina handling that?

WRENN: It’s been about a year since we passed a law that no school or public entity can pay out due to ransomware. We also legislated that schools have to report significant cyber incidents, and when they are reported, it triggers a joint cybersecurity task force to come in to support our schools.

EDTECH: Dealing with a cyber incident can be highly stressful to handle on your own. How does the task force operate?

WRENN: In March 2022, through an executive order, the Joint Cyber Security Task Force for North Carolina was created. One component of the task force is made up of the IT strike team, which is 100% volunteers from local government agencies who can mobilize and help a school if it does have an incident. They will be on the ground and be in the school to investigate until we have resolved the situation. They start by containing the incident, discovering what’s happening and offering remediation if needed.

That is a powerful tool we have in North Carolina, and our schools are incredibly grateful. So, it allows our folks who are leading technology in our schools to rest a little easier.

LEARN MORE: Why do schools need incident response plans today?

We don’t want them to have an incident, and we’re doing all we can to prevent it. We want to send a clear message to the nefarious actors: You can knock on our door and try us, but we’ve hardened our security and we aren’t going to pay you a ransom, and we’re going to recover that school as quickly as we can.