K–12 schools: Don’t miss out on new federal cybersecurity funding

The pilot includes four categories of services and products that will be eligible under the program: advanced and next-generation firewalls; endpoint protection; identify protection and authentication; and monitoring, detection, and response.

Which of these categories you focus on depends on your current cybersecurity strategy, your IT staff and capacity, your existing IT infrastructure, and the size of your organization. However, recognizing that many school districts and libraries are already strapped for funding and personnel, we recommend a unified approach that allows you to address multiple priorities with the same technology investment. This approach means fewer tools to learn and operate, a simpler technology architecture, as well as streamlined support and services.

The flexibility and openness of Elastic Security is well suited for schools and libraries looking to keep up with advanced cyber threats across complex environments. Below are some key ways that Elastic can holistically help you solve multiple cybersecurity challenges with potential federal funding, including preventing and remediating data breaches, as well as stopping unauthorized network access.

Monitoring, detection, and response: Elastic SIEM detects, investigates, and responds to cybersecurity threats with AI-driven security analytics. The solution is built on the Elastic Search AI Platform, which provides end-to-end visibility, generative AI, and advanced analytics. You’ll get all the benefits of a modern SIEM in a unified security solution: the ability to monitor and analyze data, detect anomalies, and quickly respond to and remediate any incidents.

Endpoint protection: Elastic Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) secures your Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints by blocking malware and stopping ransomware before data is encrypted. Elastic EDR integrates with the Elastic SIEM and is purchasable as a single SKU.

Advanced and next-gen firewalls: Elastic ingests your firewall data, allowing you to holistically monitor and analyze network traffic and logs for anomalies and potential threats. You’ll also get AI-driven incident response and alerting for all firewall data.

Identity protection and authentication: Elastic provides identity protection and authentication through various security features, including authentication realms like LDAP, Active Directory, and SAML, which verify user identities. Users must attach credentials to requests, and services like token and API key allow for secure authentication. Elastic’s Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) capability assigns roles to users, defining their access privileges. IP filtering restricts cluster access based on IP addresses, while TLS/SSL encryption ensures data integrity and confidentiality. Audit logging maintains a trail of user activities, aiding in monitoring and detecting potential threats.

Even with the prospect of additional cybersecurity funding, schools and libraries still need to determine how to implement and operationalize any new products and services, including team training and troubleshooting. 

Elastic Security is built on Elastic’s powerful Search AI Platform, which combines the speed of search with the intelligence of AI. As a result, our Security solution innately supports automation and AI capabilities that allow for real-time data querying and analysis. The takeaway for schools and libraries is that these capabilities mean less time and training needed for your staff.

In particular, education customers are finding the following AI-centric security features to be especially helpful for their environments: 

Elastic Attack Discovery: Instead of spending time manually sifting through hundreds of security alerts, Elastic Attack Discovery triages them down to the ones that need attention, fast. Alerts are organized in an intuitive interface, allowing even small and busy teams to quickly understand the presented attacks, take immediate follow-up actions, and avoid “alert fatigue.”

Elastic AI Assistant for Security: The Elastic AI Assistant is like having an extra (super smart) colleague sitting next to you at all times, offering context-aware guidance on alert triage, incident response, administrative tasks, and more.

Learn more about the program: Visit the FCC’s website to get the full details on eligibility, forms, requirements and more.

Apply: To apply for funding from the Schools and Libraries Pilot Program, you can take the first step by filling out FCC form 484 Part 1 on the USAC site. 

Dig deeper into how Elastic can help: Read more about Elastic Security, or reach out directly to discuss your application with our public sector team.