Making Cybersecurity Everyone's Business: Moving Cyber Preparedness Beyond the IT Department

Cybersecurity isn’t just about finding vulnerabilities. It’s about what district leaders do with what they learn. Cyber insurance and trusted incident response partners are essential to district cybersecurity. But when an incident occurs, district leaders still must make the operational decisions that keep schools running. The best time to practice those decisions is before a crisis—and to reinforce cybersecurity as a shared organizational responsibility. Join superintendents David Law, Laurie Putnam, and Sourcewell Ventures Pilot Program Manager, Lisa deRoy, to hear what the superintendents' districts learned when cybersecurity moved beyond the technology team. Through a customized, cross-departmental exercise led by the Sourcewell Ventures group, the district teams tested real-world decision-making, uncovered organizational dependencies, and identified opportunities to strengthen districtwide readiness. Participants will learn how to engage leaders across the district in cybersecurity preparedness, clarify roles and decision-making before a crisis, identify dependencies and gaps a technology assessment alone may not reveal, and turn what they learn into actions that strengthen districtwide readiness.