{"id":236586,"date":"2026-06-24T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/powered-by-ai-cyber-threats-can-even-reach-second-graders\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T13:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T17:35:09","slug":"powered-by-ai-cyber-threats-can-even-reach-second-graders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/powered-by-ai-cyber-threats-can-even-reach-second-graders\/","title":{"rendered":"Powered by AI, Cyber Threats Can Even Reach Second Graders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Powered by AI, Cyber Threats Can Even Reach Second Graders<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/security\/powered-by-ai-cyber-threats-can-even-reach-second-graders<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-24 13:31:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.govtech.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 As if the job of cybersecurity officers was not made difficult enough in today\u2019s world of threats ginned up by AI, try introducing risk-avoidance tools like multifactor authentication to second graders using Chromebooks.\u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen,\u201d Hailie Roark, information security manager at Clackamas Education Service District (CESD) in Clackamas County, Ore., said during a cybersecurity panel Tuesday at the annual meeting of Link Oregon at Portland State University.CESD offers specialized instruction to children ages 3-21 with complex needs, helping the eldest find employment; and offers teacher, student and technology support to area districts. Link Oregon is a nonprofit member organization providing middle-mile connectivity and other resources to K-12 districts, universities, cities and other public-sector organizations.K-12 school districts are certainly not immune to cyber attacks, but because of their many technology users, cybersecurity officials have had to come up with more creative approaches to controlling risk.\u201cThings like MFA, one of my favorite rants is, \u2018how do you provide and enforce MFA for second graders?\u2019\u201d Roark said, using the shorthand for multifactor authentication, the go-to security protocol organizations use to control the security of the many endpoint devices in circulation, including laptops.School districts of all sizes now issue Chromebooks to students from elementary to high school. Each of these devices is a possible entry point for a cybercriminal. A challenge for school districts \u2014 which is unique to an organization with so many young people in possession of tech \u2014 is the job of securing these devices.\u201cWhat do you do? Do you give them a little fob? Do they bring it back and forth from home every day? Do they take care of it? Does it come back?\u201d Roark said, offering scenarios which clearly stretched anyone\u2019s idea of plausible.Is it realistic to expect second graders to \u201ctype in an incredibly complex password, and then get out their fob, and type in the numbers?\u201d she said. \u201cAnd who pays for all of that?\u201dThese are some of the particular challenges K-12 cybersecurity officials face.\u201cWe have one bucket of money, and each dollar that we take for security is quite literally being taken out of a child\u2019s education. We can\u2019t win that battle,\u201d Roark said. \u201cSo I tell my districts, we\u2019ve got to get creative. We\u2019ve got to get scrappy. And we\u2019ve got to get surgical.\u201dThat might mean blocking lower-grade levels from being able to log in to their Chromebooks outside the campus.\u201cAnything you can do is what you need to do,\u201d Roark said, indicating districts need to find little areas \u201cwhere we shave off risks.\u201dDistricts need to come together to work collectively through these kinds of cybersecurity challenges, she said, \u201cand work together to get those resources. Because they\u2019re not out there. We don\u2019t have the dollars, and the cybersecurity industry isn\u2019t creating products that are going to work for a second grader.\u201dThis level of collaboration was a common theme among cybersecurity experts at the event, who offered grim findings from their front lines of managing and preventing threats \u2014 which have only increased, thanks to the muscle of AI.\u201cTwo years ago the number of attacks were much smaller. And less sophisticated,\u201d Michael Klinkerfues, network services manager at Central Oregon Community College, said during the panel. AI, he said, is \u201chelping the bad actors get better at it, faster.\u201dJose Dominguez, University of Oregon CISO, called AI \u201can accelerator.\u201dFor example, it has been common for cybersecurity teams to educate their organizations about what to look for in a phishing email, he said, listing telltale giveaways like misspellings.\u201cAI will develop a phishing campaign that is targeted just for an individual,\u201d Dominguez said. \u201cYou are going to get a lot of different channels just targeting that particular individual.\u201dCollaboration among cyber officials is helping to head off some of the attacks in the rapid-fire world of cybercriminals armed with AI-powered tools, experts said.Many of the people working in IT in Central Oregon often collaborate to monitor and track cyber events, Klinkerfues said, noting that a cyber attack in a city like Bend will often be followed 20 minutes later by another attack in a nearby city like Redmond.\u201cThat collaboration is kind of a key piece to how we can react and stay ahead of them,\u201d Klinkerfues said. \u201cBut it comes fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Powered by AI, Cyber Threats Can Even Reach Second Graders https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/security\/powered-by-ai-cyber-threats-can-even-reach-second-graders Publish Date: 2026-06-24 13:31:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/45e8aaf\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2767x1345+0+576\/resize\/1440x700!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F6c%2F09%2F80b09c1b4aa0addf23a4e41869e6%2Flink-oregon-cybersecurity-panel.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,24,25],"class_list":["post-236586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-cybersecurity","tag-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236590,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236586\/revisions\/236590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}