{"id":215766,"date":"2026-02-20T15:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:20:09","slug":"how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI is Changing Cybersecurity for K-12"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/q-a-how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12\">How AI is Changing Cybersecurity for K-12<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/q-a-how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12\">https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/q-a-how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-20 15:57:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.govtech.com\">www.govtech.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                    (TNS) \u2014 What&#8217;s especially worrisome about AI-driven cyber attacks for school district technology director Gary Lackey is that the better hackers get at using the technology to mimic real people, the more likely they are to succeed. And hackers are getting better, experts say.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some of these hacking teams are getting really smart,&#8221; said Lackey, the director of cybersecurity for the 24,000-student Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District near Houston. &#8220;What they&#8217;re going to take advantage of is how they can utilize AI to make it sound like it&#8217;s someone else and then get us to give them access into our systems.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>AI-driven cybersecurity challenges are likely to become more frequent and sophisticated for schools across the country due to AI, many K-12 educators predict. A recent EdWeek Research Center survey of teachers, principals, and district leaders found that 51 percent believe the severity of cyber attacks against their schools will pick up due to artificial intelligence in the coming year. That prediction follows reports showing that schools were already a prime target for hackers because of all the personal data they collect and the money they manage.<\/p>\n<p><span data-bsp-pv=\"4f8e492c-6f2f-390e-bc61-f176d3a37ab9\"\/><span data-bsp-pv=\"0000019c-7c8f-dbde-af9e-fcef7b130000\"\/><br \/>In a recent conversation with Education Week, Lackey talked about how advances in AI are affecting cybersecurity, the impact of cyber attacks on schools, the risks cellphones bring, and cybersecurity strategies educators should use to help protect their schools.<\/p>\n<p>This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n<p>How has the cyber threat environment changed?<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, you would easily be able to recognize a phishing email because it was so obvious with the misspellings and everything. Attackers are using whatever tools they can to improve. AI is just another iteration of that.<\/p>\n<p>AI can go research and figure out who all these different people are and what their jobs are in an [organization], who their connections are, what projects&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/q-a-how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How AI is Changing Cybersecurity for K-12 https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/q-a-how-ai-is-changing-cybersecurity-for-k-12 Publish Date: 2026-02-20 15:57:00 Source Domain: www.govtech.com&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/d3765de\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5625x2734+0+169\/resize\/1440x700!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F22%2F2a%2Feecb094549d5a2134cec6b5d250a%2Fai-and-cybersecurity.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20,25],"class_list":["post-215766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215768,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215766\/revisions\/215768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}