TEA Winner: Cloud Environment Enhances Security
- Industry: School District
- Location: Nampa, Idaho
- Employees: 1,500
- Population: 13,500
- Tyler Client Since: 2009
- Tyler Products Used: School ERP Pro
- Website: www.nsd131.org
Challenges
In 2020, school districts everywhere had to rapidly adapt to the changing landscape caused by COVID-19. The pandemic required all employees to work remotely and all students to adjust to a vastly different learning experience. Though the changes the pandemic brought with it would alter life as we know it, some changes have made learning and working more efficient in the long term. The third-largest district in Idaho, Nampa School District 131, had taken steps that helped prepare them for the shift. “We were one of the first districts in the state to give every student a computer,” said Randy Dewey, the director of finance at Nampa. “When the pandemic hit, we were already set up. We had our infrastructure built. We had the devices in hand. I think we were innovative and could get things running again quickly.”
Unfortunately, in an age where cyber criminals increasingly target school districts and other public sector organizations, the district’s investment in one-to-one technology came with new risks. “We had a ransomware attack associated with our system two days before school started,” Dewey explained. “We have 14,000 kids with computers. We also had devices for all teachers and staff. Every one of those devices got infected, and we had no network for a while.”
Solution
Dewey and his team saw the opportunity to help prevent future cybersecurity risks in a cloud environment. The district had been able to innovate and achieve learning goals by investing in student technology; they realized that investment in their hosting platform would build upon and protect that progress. “Why spend the money? It only takes you one big cyber incident to figure out spending the money is an important thing. You lose a lot more money when you have an incident, and you can’t get your data,” Dewey explained. “Had we been in the cloud, the ransomware wouldn’t have compromised our database. We could have just gone to another computer, gotten into our software, and done business as usual.”
The Nampa district team prioritized cloud technology that supported critical business processes. As a client of School ERP Pro for more than a decade, they made a plan with their Tyler team to shift to a cloud-based version of this key solution.
The cloud solution allows for easier access to the system for our users, timely updates, easier tech help, less risk of lost data, and a more secure environment.
Randy Dewey
Director of Finance, Nampa School District 131, Idaho
Results
Nampa has now seen the long-term benefits of the cloud firsthand, far beyond responding to the pandemic. “I truly believe it is beneficial for all districts to be in the cloud,” Dewey said. “The cloud solution allows for easier access to the system for our users, timely updates, easier tech help, less risk of lost data, and a more secure environment.”
An immediate benefit of their cloud-based system was that it unlocked flexibility for remote work. “I can’t stress enough how useful the cloud environment was during COVID,” Dewey said. “Every one of my accounting staff had to work from home. Instead of our IT team having to set up multiple VPNs, we took our work stuff home, put it on the table, and were 100% at that point. We had no downtime at all in our accounting department.”
The new solution has also streamlined and optimized previously manual processes. “We’re not a big district, but we still have 26 different sites,” explained Dewey. “With different schools and other departments, you get up to 35 different areas where you need to send and get approvals. It’s super nice to have everything digitally instead of having to get a handwritten document signed and then having to scan that in for proof.”
With the district’s data in the cloud, they received simplified access to Tyler’s support, enabling faster resolutions and reducing downtime. “When we needed support in the past, it was difficult for somebody from Tyler to log into our system,” Dewey said. “They had to figure it out remotely since everything was stored on our servers. Now it’s something Tyler can easily assist us with.”
Nampa’s one-to-one technology, coupled with their cloud-based School ERP Pro solution, has helped them prepare for cyber threats and advances in instruction methods and operations for years to come.