Westfield IT Manager Lenore Bernashe receives a certificate from Secretary of Technology Services and Security Curt Wood and Lt. Governor Karyn Polito . (Photo submitted)
WESTFIELD — Westfield is one of 94 municipalities and public school districts across the Commonwealth to receive a grant for cybersecurity awareness, Information Technology Manager Lenore J. Bernashe and Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski announced this week.
Bernashe recently attended a kickoff meeting in Worcester, where Lt. Governor Karyn Polito and Secretary of Technology Services and Security Curt Wood met with award recipients. She said the grant program will allow the city and school district to educate employees on how to identify cybersecurity threats and provide proactive phishing training.
“Cyberattacks are an emerging and increasing threat to communities across the Commonwealth and the nation,” said Secretary of Technology Services and Security Curt Wood in a press release about the program. “By strengthening our communities’ cybersecurity posture, we are preparing municipal and schoolemployees to better detect and defend against cyber threats.”
In January, all employees in the city and district will undergo cybersecurity assessments to see what they know, followed up with additional assessment training.
Then in February to December, they will be trained in the online program, which would normally come at a cost to the city. Bernashe said Westfield received 2,600 licenses from the grant for the training, which she said may be used for employees’ professional and personal lives.
“We’re trying to be proactive to give people the tools they need to identify cybersecurity risks,” Bernashe said, adding, “In today’s society, it’s not a question of if but of when.”
Bernashe and Czaporowski said they may also be able to bring some IT students into the training, such as Westfield Technical Academy’s Information Technology program, which has a cybersecurity component. “This would give them some real-world training,” Bernashe said.
Cybersecurity becomes more essential as the district closes in on becoming a one-to-one district, with devices for every student.
Bernashe said over the course of the past one and a half years, the IT Department has installed over 4,000 Chromebooks for teachers and students.
The 1:1 program rolled out in the Westfield Middle School in October, and is still on track to begin in January or February at the Westfield Intermediate School.
Westfield Technical Academy is close to being 1:1, and Abner Gibbs Elementary school already is 1:1, they said.
In the 1:1 program, students are assigned their own device, which they are given at the start of the day and must turn in at the end of the day.
“Some people want us to allow students to take them home,” Czaporowski said, which they may look into it down the road. He said there are concerns about damage and loss, which presents a whole other set of issues.
Westfield High School, which has over 600 Chromebooks plus other devices for 1,250 students, also launched a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program last year.
“It’s not as widespread as we hoped,” Czaporowski said about enrollment in the program. With BYOD, students bring their home devices to school and log into the wi-fi network when they get there. “We need to do a better job promoting it,” he said.
Both Czaporowski and Bernashe said parents might consider buying their students a Chromebook of their own this holiday season.
Bernashe said 11-inch Chromebooks by any maker (such as HP, Samsung, Acer, or any other), generally run in the $200 range. She said the specifications on the school devices are 4 gigabytes of memory and 32 gigabytes of storage, which are good standards for students.
For those parents interested, Czaporowski suggested watching for holiday sales on the devices.
