Remarks: National Cyber Director Coker at Cybersecurity Education Summit: Preparing Schools for a Digital Future

Providence, Rhode Island

December 9, 2024

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good Morning Rhode Island,

We’re delighted to be here with you today. Thank you for that introduction, Jeannine. And thank you to the Rhode Island Department of Education and Cranston High School East for hosting this event today.

I would also like to acknowledge Governor [Daniel] McKee, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education [Angélica] Infante-Green and Congressman [Gabe] Amo. As well as many of our federal partners who have joined us today – I know you’ll hear from them later today.

And I want to make special recognition of our great friend and cyber leader, Congressman Jim Langevin. He’s been an ally in the flight to keep our Nation more secure and a visionary who helped establish the National Cyber Director’s Office in the White House. We’re thankful for his vision and leadership.

I’m honored to be with you all today as you mark an important occasion, a day when you all are taking definitive action to further protect your schools from growing cyber threats.

I know I don’t have to tell you that K-12 schools across the country are facing unprecedented cyber challenges.

We live in an increasingly digital world. In fact, as a consequence of the pandemic, K-12 schools became virtual classrooms almost overnight. I know that the success of the explosion of connectivity you all facilitated was thanks to many of the leaders in this room. You ensured that learning would continue and you rose to meet an unprecedented challenge. And now you all face another –

Ransomware attacks against schools. The devious practice where hackers, nation-states, and malicious cyber actors lock students and teachers out of their systems holding them hostage until they’re paid. Ransomware attacks on schools doubled last year and that’s why action is needed. And that’s why we’re here today.

Cyber attacks against our schools have led to the exposure of sensitive data that invades the privacy of our students, their families, and teachers and administrators. The cyber attackers have caused disruption to the point of multi-day shutdowns, taking students away from the classroom and the critical services that our education system provides, putting an additional strain on working families and educators. These cyberattacks have financial costs to taxpayers in the millions-of-dollars, but they also have real-life costs and cascading impacts.

Our schools have been, for too long, going toe-to-toe with the bad guys: motivated ransomware gangs, sophisticated cyber criminals, and well-resourced Nation-state actors. You all very often lack not only the budget for cybersecurity, but also the dedicated personnel to implement a cybersecurity program. That’s not sustainable. And, at the White House, we recognize that.

Our office’s first big undertaking when we were established three years ago was to lead the development of President Biden’s National Cybersecurity Strategy, which charts a vision for an equitable, safe, and interconnected digital ecosystem in which every American can thrive.

In order to achieve this vision, we must rebalance the responsibility for securing cyberspace in favor of individuals, in favor of from small businesses, and in favor from schools. We need those who are most capable of defending cyber space – like large tech companies, importantly, – Federal government to take on a larger role.

And our convening today is a perfect example of what that looks like in practice.

Following a K-12 cybersecurity summit hosted at the White House over a year ago, the Office of the National Cyber Director launched an initiative to make school and district administrators aware of free resources that will help schools combat emerging cyber threats.

Over the past year I’ve been across the country meeting with school administrators, district leaders, and state and local leaders to discuss resources from the federal government that will help better protect our students and our schools.

One such tool is called protective domain name service – or PDNS. It’s got a wonky name but it works.

PDNS is effective because it blocks access to harmful phishing sites that our students, teachers, and faculty may unknowingly be exposed to. It reduces the threat of a cyber-attack before it happens.

Best of all, after you deploy PDNS – which is a fairly straightforward process – you don’t have to actively do anything to keep it running. Administrators can set it and forget it. The internet service provider updates the list of malicious domains that are being blocked on behalf of the customer behind the scenes.

And, as I said, PDNS is available at no cost to every public school in America – an important resource made available by the Biden-Harris Administration. I should mention it’s available to libraries too!

We’ve been traveling around the country encouraging school districts to sign up and we’ve made great progress with growing the number of schools using this resource. But today is particularly remarkable.

I’m so pleased to announce that Rhode Island is the first state in the Nation to protect students by implementing this important cyber defense capability across all of its public schools. Thanks to all of you, every school district – and that means students, schools, and communities – will be better protected from cyber criminals by the end of this school year.

The leadership you’ve shown here in Rhode Island will make nearly 136,000 students more secure.

I applaud your commitment to cybersecurity in your schools, and I’m proud to be here to celebrate this milestone.

Now, to be clear, PDNS isn’t a silver bullet. But it is a free, effective resource we’re encouraging every school district and library in the country to use. It’s an important line of defense. Today I’m pleased that so many of our Federal partners are here to share their resources and best practices that will help further increase our ability to share information, share lessons learned and make the connections necessary to respond to any incident.

Rhode Island is proving to be a leader in the work to keep students, teachers, administrators and their data safe.

I’m proud of the work you’re doing, the resilience you’ve shown, and your commitment to building a digital future that is prosperous and safe.

I greatly appreciate the commitment and leadership shown by everyone here today. Rhode Island is leading the way.

And to tell us more about this incredible commitment to your students, schools and communities, I’m please to introduce your Governor, Daniel McKee.