PARIS — Maine School Administrative District 17 Technology Director Meghan Lampert presented an administrative update to directors last week about the developments, challenges and changes her department has focused on since she joined the district at the start of the 2023-24 school year.
Her focus has been on major network upgrades and system updates.
Maine School Administrative District 17’s Technology Director Meghan Lampert addressed the school board on cyber security and other issues at its Dec. 2 business meeting. Nicole Carter / Advertiser Democrat
“We have improved our cyber security immensely,” Lampert said. “We had a lot of outdated servers that were public facing, which means anyone from the outside world could access. One of my goals last year was to take them offline and find other ways to protect our work.”
The Tech Department rendered and removed all equipment past end-of-life and outdated from the district network.
Lampert said that requests for proposal from contractors for the $500,000 COPS grant for security has been posted. The grant will cover cost and installation for security cameras and building notification systems, which she expects to be done next summer.
“We are doing walkthroughs of all the buildings with interested vendors,” she said. “We hope to have (contracts) nailed down by January.”
Another major project in the works is an audit of all data and education tech products in use by the district to ensure compliance with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), as well as provide educational benefit, appropriateness for student use and student data security.
Another priority project is to go through all the district’s devices and cull out any that are past end-of-life.
“It goes back to our cyber security,” she said. “Those devices that are no longer eligible for system or software upgrades become a security risk. It’s not like 10-15 years ago when we could make products last until they pretty much died.”
Network infrastructure and upgrades is another area under thorough review, Lampert advised the board.