May 7, 2024 at 8:00 AM - Information Services Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Call to order at 8:00 AM.  

Staff:  Kraig Lofquist, Deb Hericks, Priscilla Quintana

Discussion:  142 school districts and ESUs are participating in the Proofpoint Security Awareness Training platform, utilizing 22,215 staff licenses. Billing is in progress for this year's participation.

48 school districts and ESUs are participating in the Duo Security multi-factor authentication system, utilizing 8,646 licenses. 1,354 licenses remain available. Billing is in progress for this year's participation.

188 school districts and ESUs are participating in the Canvas consortium, utilizing 82,619 licenses. During April, the Canvas team presented sessions for school administrators at ESU 3, ESU 13, ESU 10 and the Northeast Community College Norfolk campus. Roughly 60 administrators attended these sessions.

Over the summer, the team will be presenting 2-day workshops for Canvas users of all levels. Register at https://bit.ly/CanvasNE for one of these Canvas Roadshow sessions:

• May 28, 29 - Scottsbluff / ESU 13
• May 30, 31 - Maxwell
• June 5, 6 - Wakefield / ESU 1
• June 13, 14 - LaVista / ESU 3
• June 17, 18 - Norfolk
• June 19, 20 - Hastings / ESU 9

The Nebraska Future Ready Conference is June 10-11, 2024 both in person at the NDE office and virtually. 

The STEADfast project is a browser plug-in designed to help school districts collect data about the performance of home broadband Internet services and indicate areas of the state where service improvements are needed. This project was started with the development work of ESU 10 using GEER funds earlier. $45,000 remaining ESSER III funding is available to continue development and pilot this software with a school district. We are working out the details of this with NDE and ESU 10.
 

Discussion:  The State and Local Cybersecurity Grant (SLCG) state committee is in the process of scoring year 2 proposals. 60 project proposals were submitted, totalling $7.7 million in requested funding. $4.2 million in funding is available. Projects range from very small (just a few thousand dollars, to one that is $4.4 million by itself). The plan is to have the projects scored with notifications to the projects moving forward in May. The state committee meets again on May 9, 2024.

Four cybersecurity projects are moving forward with $500,000 in ESSER III funding allocated through ESUCC:

• Establish a Nebraska chapter of the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN)
• Provide summer workshops and support for schools and ESUs to create and improve cyber incident response plans 
• Support the Cyber Tatanka training and simulation exercises conducted in the summer
• Fund trials of security operation center (SOC) and penetration testing services

All work must be completed with these funds by September 30, 2024. 

Discussion:  The NNNC is requesting that ESUCC assume ownership of the dmarcian contract.  This contract is currently utilized by every ESU, except 18 & 19.  The cost will be $12,000 per year, with each participating ESU paying their share.  Andy Boell is working on a partnership with multiple post-secondary institutions which can help to reduce the cost to all ESUs. Management of this service would be done by a member of the ESUCC technical staff. This is an action item on today's agenda.

DMARC stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance" and its purpose is to authenticate email from our domains to help people receiving our email to know it is or isn't really from us to reduce spam and security threats through email. The dmarcian platform is a tool to help configure, test and monitor DMARC much more easily than doing the tasks manually.

Discussion:  The SIMPL Workgroup met yesterday to discuss SIMPL information moving forward.

Discussion:  Discussion regarding the disposal of asset tag 0502.

Discussion:  Review the remaining of the Technology Director report.  

Discussion:  Digital Learning Director gave his updates to the board.  

Discussion:  Review of Eis's report.  

Discussion:  Meeting adjourned 8:48 AM.