IBM today announced in-kind grants valued at $3 million to help strengthen cybersecurity in schools. These grants will be awarded to six school districts in the United States to sponsor teams of IBMers to help them proactively prepare for and respond to cyberattacks.
Services will be delivered by teams deployed via IBM’s Service Corps Program. The grant is being announced following a December alert from the FBI warning that nearly 60% of reported ransomware incidents between August and September 2020 involved K-12 schools, a 29% jump from the months prior.1
In response to the growing ransomware attacks against schools, Morning Consult conducted a study, sponsored by IBM, of 1,000 U.S. educators and administrators in K-12 schools and colleges to better understand the level of cybersecurity awareness, preparedness and training within schools during the shift to remote schooling.2 The results demonstrate the growing need for improved security education and skills, as more than half of U.S. educators and administrators have not received basic cybersecurity training from their institutions despite new remote learning protocols.
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IBM Education Security Preparedness Grant
IBM is launching a new education cybersecurity grant that will help U.S. public school districts better prepare for growing cyberattacks including ransomware. A total of six grants of in-kind services, valued at $500,000 each ($3 million in total), will be awarded in 2021 to school districts that apply for the grant via IBM.org. School districts can apply between February 4 and March 1, 2021 and recipients will be announced shortly after. School districts will be selected to receive the grant based on their level of cybersecurity needs and how they meet the criteria outlined by IBM.
While previously, IBM employees have helped local municipalities manage such cyberattacks, this initiative announced today will help formalize IBM’s community service efforts to help schools prepare for and respond to cyber threats. The grant, created as part of IBM’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, will be an in-kind contribution in the form of resources and hours performed by IBM Service Corps teams of 6-10 people per district. Volunteers will be carefully selected based on their skills and will provide services including developing incident response plans, providing basic cybersecurity training such as password hygiene and implementing strategic communication plans to use in response to a cyber incident.
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