Episode 285 - Googlebook Arrives, Gemini Gems Ends

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On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, 2 more edtech companies
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suffer cyberattacks, exposing employee and student health data.
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We also have an early look at what the Google Book timeline looks like while
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Google quietly kills off Gemini Gems for teachers. Thanks for listening this
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Live from the NTP studios,
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this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast. This is
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episode 285. I am Josh.
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Sorry I wasn't here last week.
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Yes, we got the emails.
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We've got an amazing amount of comments on our Spotify page.
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Thank you, listeners, for those comments. Hint,
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they're not really listeners. All the children.
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All the high school kids. Mark found the story from NPR.
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Wait, what? Sir, what?
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Yeah, Mark. He was in the Wall Street Journal today. He was quoted.
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Yes, that Mark. Who's he talking to? We're watching him talk to
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the wall. The producers, Mark. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's no producers behind you. We can
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see the wall behind you. I've got a live studio audience in my studio here.
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Gotcha, okay. Chris, you're down the street from me. Hello, Chris.
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What up? And Mark, yes, that Mark,
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Mark that was in the Wall Street Journal today. Hello, Mark.
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Yeah, I was, you know, giving some financial advice over there in the Wall Street
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Journal. What were you saying? Buy a Google book?
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Yeah. I was advising against buying oil right now.
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Sure, sure, sure. That makes sense. Wait a little bit longer. Yeah. Yeah.
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Sell high, buy low, right? Yeah. No, quick update
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on that one. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about Google and
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their push to move Gemini into the classroom.
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I had been talking with them a little bit on background and they
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used a little bit of my words, just a single quote around
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how You really can't escape Gemini in the classroom.
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And yeah, that's about it. So should
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we say this was taken out of context or fake news or
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what buzz phrase would you like to use? What do you mean by that?
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What do you mean by that, Mark? To defend yourself. Well,
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obviously we have a very long conversation and then like one
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line gets used in the article. So there's always the like, oh, thanks for
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taking that one line and not the entire conversation, but I get it. For the
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purposes of print, you've got to be brief. I have— I
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don't want to say been critical, but I have been kind of reflective of,
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you know, schools want to dabble in AI and
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they want to start to use AI, but they want to kind of walk their
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way into it. The way Gemini has been rolled out in Google Classroom is that
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it's kind of an all or nothing. You turn it on and everything comes with
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it, as opposed to allowing school districts to kind of pick and choose what features
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they want to do, whether or not it's Gemini in Gmail or Gemini the app
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and Gemini Google Classroom. So I would love to see Google add some
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more granular controls for districts to be able to control those features a
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little bit more than you currently can. You mean like, yeah, you want, I agree,
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Mark. You want the school district to be able to decide what's good for their
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district? Yeah. Novel concept, huh?
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What I heard is Mark
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wants a paragraph next time, not a single sentence.
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Yeah, I heard that too. No, you know what? Here's the real
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truth. I didn't want to be on that article to begin with.
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So we'll put that there. Can I do another Google
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wishlist that will never happen? You know, but I want like Google search controls
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in my Google Admin Console as well. And I know that that's like a crazy
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concept as well, but. Are you saying you want to, I don't know, turn off
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AI search mode? Yeah, like an easy button.
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We're not getting into that.
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No. Any of that.
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I think if it's Google, that it should be in Google Admin Console.
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Any of it. Google Admin Console. Toggle on and off.
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Or maybe the folks at Google aren't smart enough to figure that out.
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Oh my. Just kidding.
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That is— We're gonna get emails tomorrow. You know we're gonna get emails tomorrow.
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Chris, go ahead and give your email, Chris. It was just a joke. I was
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just joking. Yep, Chris. I thought we were joking. I thought we were just joking
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around. What's your email, Chris?
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That's info@k12techtalkpodcast.com.
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Subject line, give me Google controls.
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You send the hate there, Google people. We know you're listening.
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We like Google. That is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
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Mark! You need
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to take that AI Josh out and— All right, all right, no more AI Josh.
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Put him down. I saw your lips move.
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Speaking of moving, if you want to move your app data into real impact in
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your school district, you should check out Lightspeed Systems, their Insight product.
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If you're wanting to get a grip and look at real data with your screen
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time, with what app usage looks like, check that out. You can
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go to lightspeedsystems.com, click under products, click on Insight. I think we'll get
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to unpack that more, I'd say in a couple weeks or a month. I'm using
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Insight in my school district now. We can dig
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into what that looks like. And just any tool in general that you can get
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some insight into your screen time data usage is a good thing. But Lightspeed has
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that solution. Check that out. You know, around that screen
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time discussion, I think if you're in one of those areas,
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one of those states that has a propensity to try and legislate
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this or did it last session and maybe they're looking at doing it
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this session, I think It's an easy conversation to have in your
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district about getting in front of that and knowing what
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your current screen time is. How can
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you make a change or how can you drive change if you don't know where
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you are now? And I think that's kind of where you're standing with
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this, doing this demo, is trying to figure out
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where you are. Because, you know, everybody can have feelings. Like, our teachers
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have feelings that we don't use that much screen time. Our screen time's
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less than an hour or whatever is the feeling. But what does the data
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really show? And I think those 2 things have
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to align. And maybe it's
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the reality of it isn't what the feelings are being
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felt. I don't know. Yeah, my full transparency on us
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even using it, I don't know if we're going to long game use it.
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Like 2 years from now, 3 years from now, maybe we will.
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Sure. But my district, we've done a lot of talking about how much
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we use particular apps and how much screen time. If there's
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a building that's like, I use it less or I'm using it more, all those
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kinds of changes, we need to know what we're talking about.
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Just today we had a leadership meeting and I got to share the average
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screen time. And again, you're getting a kindergarten kid with a 12th grader mixed in
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together and just a month's worth of data. So we need more time on that
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too. Yeah, we got to have data to support— a good decision is
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going to be based upon some data, so that's what we need to do.
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Well, and that in everybody, in the mindset of
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everybody having financial issues, you have that conversation
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of, okay, if the elementary school really is sub-20 minutes
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average in a day, do they need a cart
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in every room, or do they need to be 1-to-1? Is that a
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good allocation of dollars on a refresh cycle if
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you can prove that they're only using those devices 20 minutes a day?
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I think that's a very valid conversation, especially now that we're starting to—
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the pendulum has swung, money is scarce again.
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We're gonna have those conversations with refresh cycles of what are
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we gonna buy and what aren't we going to buy. I think this is
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an easy way to help drive that conversation. Agree. Mark agrees.
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He's shaking his head. Agreed. All right, Mark, you want to bring the news
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with us? Yeah. So I guess we could start with
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more of a programmatic message. We have been talking
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about this and we've decided we are no longer going to be talking as a
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podcast about artificial intelligence. In fact, this is the last
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time I'm even going to mention artificial intelligence because it is
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officially called superintelligence now. Facts. Facts. Can we give
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it an acronym too? What would you like to call it? I'm sticking with the
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OG. I'm sticking with A1. All right, you go for that.
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All right, let's switch over to Google right now. So we've got a couple of
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big technical updates from Google. So the first hint of what Chromebook
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OS, it's called a Googlebook OS. Is that what we're calling it?
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What's the official name here? I don't know. Googlebook.
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Googlebook. I feel like I'm going to keep calling it
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a Chromebook. I think I'll stick with OG as well. We have
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all agreed that it doesn't matter what you call it. Our kids and teachers are
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going to call it a Chromebook forever. But Google Book
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is coming in. I didn't realize this. It is coming out for personal consumer
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use within the next year, actually very soon. So it is important to note
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that just because you see Google Books on the street for personal use does not
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mean that they are going to be ready for school districts to be used.
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Districts will have the ability to kind of set parameters as to
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do you want to allow staff to log into a Google Book device.
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But then the actual management console controls
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will come about a year from now in the second half of 2027.
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So look for those controls to come out a year from now.
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In the meantime, it is simply going to be a consumer device.
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In terms of your existing Chromebooks or ChromeOS devices,
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they are going to continue to be supported. For the lifetime of those
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devices that you currently have. Devices that are purchased today will be
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supported for approximately 10 years.
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Beyond 2034, 2035,
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Google is saying that they're committed to supporting the transition over to Google Book
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OS. So devices that you purchase today or within the last
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few years will likely be compatible with Google Book.
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Devices that are older than that, maybe, you know, 5, 10 years ago,
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that you purchase them, they'll continue to run until their expected lifespan,
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at which point they will no longer receive updates. So that's essentially
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the transition that we have right now. This is going to be a long,
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slow transition for the devices that you currently have. I can
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buy right now, I can buy an Acer Googlebook
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14-inch Intel Core Ultra
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5 series 16 gig of RAM, 512 gig storage
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for $899 at Best Buy and pick it up Monday.
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Go for it. That's the consumer-grade version. It looks like
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it's a convertible device. So it looks like it might be touchscreen as well as—
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Is there going to be cheaper ones? There's going to have to be cheaper
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ones. Otherwise, the MacBook Neo will eat the lunch.
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Because that's the low end, right? I think $899 is the
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low. Then it goes $1,299. Oh, there's a $999.
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I'd be willing to try this. 12, 10. If somebody bought it
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for me. I don't know. I'm all in on Android right now. We're an Android
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house. So this appeals to me. The whole house? Well,
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I mean, yeah. My wife uses
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a Pixel phone. I use a Pixel phone. I think your wife, she only does
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that for you. Yeah. No, she tried. She don't want that Android.
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No, she tried to migrate to an iPhone and she hated
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it. She took it back. I don't believe it. But, well— I had my wife
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on an Android. It was a rough period in our marriage. I got her on
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iPhone and we're good. We're good now.
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And Josh's wife is, we recently learned on a previous episode
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that Josh's wife, who has been a teacher for a long time, had never made
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a slideshow before. No. Still has not. Still has not.
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Still has not made a slideshow. Yeah, Jim and I did that. So she surprises
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me sometimes. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
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Transparency. Transparency. She's always taught kindergarten or pre-K.
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She's got an Android, but she's never made a slideshow? Hmm.
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Yeah. Okay. Sounds like an Android user to me.
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Okay, give your email again. Send the hate mail to Chris.
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Email info@k12techtalkpodcast.com.
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Subject line, Android haters.
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Anyways, I'll take a Google Book. I like them. They look slick.
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Acer, you want to send them to us? Send them on over. I did not
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mean for this to be the hate on Google episode, but our
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next article is that Google has killed off Google Gems just
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in time to finish up the summer PD schedule, which I got to go back
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and apologize. All the districts that I just taught how to use Gems this summer.
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Gems will be discontinued. They will be migrated into
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skills. Now, this is actually what I'm excited about. Skills, if you're not familiar
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with a skill, it's kind of like the recipe part of a gem. It is
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already in use in ChatGPT and Claude. And so now Google is adopting
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the same protocol. Essentially, you are writing your skills or your
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instructions in a markdown file, and you can bring that between the different protocols or
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different systems. And then you can use that skill. The same way you would use
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a gem. The one caveat though is a gem currently is like a sandboxed
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environment if you're familiar with how gems work. And they have been very popular with
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teachers who want to use AI with students in a controlled
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way. So you could, the teacher could write the instructions for
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the gem, share that out to their classroom, and the students would only be able
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to use the gem the way the teachers did it. It's not quite how skills
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work. Like I said, the skill is simply just the recipe part of the
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gem. So if you are a teacher using Gems, or if you're
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in Google Workspace Education, you have until June of 2027,
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which is very nice of Google to continue that through the rest of the
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year. Consumer accounts, Gems will be going away in the next
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month or so, around November, and then in March
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for Workplace Workspace Business accounts. So at least
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they recognize that let's get this to the end of the school year. But I
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would say at this point, once you hear the message that gems is going away,
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you're not really going to get too invested in showing your
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district how to use them or create new ones. So skills coming soon. I like
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the idea that they're going to align with the other big
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models that are using the word skills as that functionality.
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I think that just helps with communication.
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Yeah, for sure. In terms of how this actually plays out, how you're
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able to manage in these and create and manage them, you can, if you look
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in your consumer account now, you can see what gems look like. But obviously,
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this is going to be very interesting to see how this works with enterprise management,
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the ability for a district to build a skill and then push that out to
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the teachers. I'm kind of excited about the prospects of that. 2 things for me.
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Email fortinet@fortinetpodcast@fortinet.com,
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and then also check out Managed Methods. In a couple weeks, we're going to do
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an interview with Skip over at Managed to talk about a new product that they
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have coming out. But I guess the third thing, Gems to me,
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I never really got into them. And it was kind of that thing like Mark,
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especially you would talk about how good it was. But just hearing
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the word gem didn't unpack for me, oh, I should dig into that
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and use that. But you barely talk about skills. So if this is a rebranding
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shift a little bit too, like, I don't know, for people like me that
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I just need like an easy word to know what I'm going to like potentially
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get into with this, with the superintelligence. I'm going to
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know what Skills is kind of getting me into. So I guess I can appreciate
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Google seeing early on, hey, we need to make a little pivot here. Maybe they
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weren't getting the usage that they thought. They see something that's better. So I can
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go for that. Completely agree with everything you've said. Yes.
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All right. And then finally,
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2 topics that we're probably going to have to come back to. What else you
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got, Mark? Well, I would say I hope we don't have to come back to
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these 2 things. Hazel Health is a telehealth company
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that specifically caters to school districts. They're in about 19 states and they're in
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many of the large, large districts. They provide telehealth services.
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So basically any sort of nursing
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or e-health services that a school district may want to provide to
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students is provided at no cost to families.
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Unfortunately, it appears that they have suffered a breach. The ransomware
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group Direwolf has listed Hazel Health on their website,
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although Hazel Health themselves have not acknowledged this. So they have not confirmed
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the claim, nor have they sent any messages to their customers. So this
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will be very interesting to see what happens. Obviously, this is a very, very sensitive
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subject when you're talking about telehealth and the amount of information or data that could
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be potentially compromised in this situation. The other one,
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which we do know is a confirmed breach, unfortunately, is Frontline.
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Frontline, if you're not familiar with that company, they provide a lot of staff-related
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services in terms of hiring, substitute management evaluation
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type services, uh, and in an edtech platform.
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We don't have a lot of details for this breach other than the letters that
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have been shared by school districts. It appears to be that this is related to
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some staff data. It may or may not be limited to one or two
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modules. Frontline is kind of like a,
17:23.630 --> 17:27.096
a PowerSchool type company where they have bought multiple other
17:27.596 --> 17:30.917
products and merged them into one. And so it's very possible that this breach only
17:30.949 --> 17:34.867
impacted one of those modules. But like I said, this is
17:35.367 --> 17:38.897
a company that provides a lot of different edtech products or modules
17:38.993 --> 17:42.493
around employee management. And so the potential for this
17:42.509 --> 17:45.624
one is, is, is pretty catastrophic if
17:45.640 --> 17:49.558
this breach is as far-reaching as all of their platforms go. So we'll be
17:50.058 --> 17:53.187
watching that one very carefully, and maybe we might have to bring on Michael Klein
17:53.687 --> 17:57.039
in the next couple of weeks to talk about this? Yeah, that notification went
17:57.104 --> 18:00.153
out this afternoon around 2 o'clock Central Time.
18:00.490 --> 18:04.294
My district did not get that notification. We only use
18:04.326 --> 18:07.840
the applicant part of that, you know, applying for jobs.
18:08.113 --> 18:12.318
I know, I know another district that only uses the absence management
18:12.447 --> 18:16.443
piece of it. They did not get the alert, but districts
18:16.943 --> 18:21.040
that use other modules including TimeClock Um,
18:21.168 --> 18:25.233
substitute management, that kind of stuff. They did get the alert. So I
18:25.733 --> 18:28.350
don't know, I, I kind of felt left out that we didn't get the alert,
18:28.447 --> 18:32.007
but that's probably— Josh feels very left out.
18:32.492 --> 18:36.050
Probably. I do. I,
18:36.519 --> 18:40.253
I have FOMO. I have FOMO. I really wanted
18:40.753 --> 18:44.559
that letter. So we'll see what's, what's going on with this one. Uh, we obviously
18:45.475 --> 18:48.801
do not need yet another breach. I would say if Frontline, if the,
18:48.929 --> 18:52.681
if the Totality of frontline has been breached and impacted,
18:52.793 --> 18:57.273
we're looking at a pretty significant situation at, or if
18:57.289 --> 19:00.886
not larger than the ones we've seen in the past. So I'm
19:00.902 --> 19:04.322
very curious to see what happens here. But like I said, just breaking,
19:04.499 --> 19:07.132
well, it'll take us another week or so to find out what's actually happening.
19:07.469 --> 19:11.098
Yeah, that the blast radius on this potentially
19:11.598 --> 19:14.888
is massive. Massive. Okay, so I think
19:14.952 --> 19:18.806
we're gonna jump into— we've been hanging out with Lumu
19:19.306 --> 19:21.794
for the last several weeks. They are a proud sponsor of the K-12 Tech Talk
19:21.859 --> 19:25.457
podcast, and I got to sit down with one of their customers to unpack
19:25.473 --> 19:28.686
Lumu, unpack cybersecurity. There's some pretty good and general
19:29.186 --> 19:32.654
thoughts of the state of K-12 cybersecurity and why we should be looking at
19:32.767 --> 19:36.895
more advanced tools in our school districts. So this is an interview with
19:36.959 --> 19:40.542
Lumu, and thanks for listening. Okay, I am hanging
19:40.638 --> 19:43.899
out with Michael Marassa. Michael, how's it going? It's good. How are
19:44.012 --> 19:47.512
you today, Chris? I'm good. So, uh, you use Lumu.
19:47.785 --> 19:50.611
We're gonna dig into that in just a couple minutes, but, uh, we were quick
19:51.111 --> 19:54.770
unpacking. You have some Chicago ties, I think. So I think let's just take
19:55.270 --> 19:58.543
a half a step back. Just tell us about yourself, a little
19:59.043 --> 20:02.863
bit about your background. Do you like Chicago-style hot dogs, Italian beef?
20:03.280 --> 20:06.989
Uh, that, that— Oh yeah, we can get, we can get all into, to Chicago
20:07.489 --> 20:10.971
for sure. So Chris, just a little bit about me. Um, I was
20:11.244 --> 20:14.359
in the field of education for 33 years. Uh,
20:14.520 --> 20:17.937
I started as a middle school
20:18.050 --> 20:21.161
teacher. You know, most people don't start in technology,
20:21.257 --> 20:26.228
and when I started in education in 1993,
20:26.324 --> 20:29.740
technology was really just kind of starting.
20:30.237 --> 20:34.166
I remember being a middle school teacher, and we
20:34.182 --> 20:38.030
had a couple of Mac IIe labs that our students could go
20:38.174 --> 20:41.927
into to do some, you know, some simple exercises.
20:41.991 --> 20:46.011
Nice. And then, It just so happened that the technology director
20:46.044 --> 20:50.117
in 1996 selected me and 20-plus
20:50.149 --> 20:53.711
other teachers out of 800 to get a desktop
20:54.211 --> 20:57.253
computer for our classroom. I have no idea why I was selected,
20:57.269 --> 21:01.258
Chris, but I was picked. I was the only middle school teacher
21:01.484 --> 21:04.148
in my building who got a computer.
21:06.229 --> 21:09.646
And probably the most advantageous thing of
21:10.166 --> 21:13.931
of receiving that, Chris, was, uh, I got a, I got a
21:14.431 --> 21:18.658
gradebook program that allowed me to, uh, to automate
21:19.158 --> 21:22.888
my scoring, uh, so when I needed to, to enter grades,
21:22.984 --> 21:26.108
I could put it all into a software system and it did all the work
21:26.608 --> 21:30.450
for me. Crazy. And crazy, right? Like, because we were using these things
21:30.530 --> 21:33.350
called slide rules and writing things in a book,
21:34.119 --> 21:37.436
uh, and it was all manual, and this just automated things for me.
21:37.500 --> 21:41.029
And then of course You know, the internet started to roll around.
21:41.254 --> 21:45.057
Um, where I was based was the home of kind of one
21:45.557 --> 21:49.182
of the early internet browsers called Netscape Navigator that was
21:49.535 --> 21:53.306
rolled out, uh, by the University of Illinois. And so,
21:53.932 --> 21:57.543
um, I just took some classes, uh, that a lot of
21:58.043 --> 22:01.378
other tech directors who wanted to get like a certification
22:01.892 --> 22:04.909
went through, and that was kind of like the start of my journey.
22:06.543 --> 22:10.148
And I got offered a job to work for the state, and my school district
22:10.648 --> 22:13.000
said, hey, we were thinking about creating a job for you.
22:13.817 --> 22:17.518
And like a half hour later, a job got posted, and I didn't leave
22:18.018 --> 22:22.100
that district for 5 years and started working in technology leadership
22:22.180 --> 22:25.897
for another 5 years before opportunities
22:26.154 --> 22:30.015
in Chicago came along. And I worked in Chicago
22:30.640 --> 22:34.597
technology leadership for a couple different school districts. I just,
22:35.240 --> 22:38.739
Retired, as I said, a couple of months ago.
22:39.530 --> 22:42.836
I was on the board— Congratulations to that. Yeah, thanks. I was on
22:43.336 --> 22:47.797
the board for our Illinois COSN chapter and
22:47.990 --> 22:51.468
did a lot of thought leadership, have done a lot of speaking and
22:51.968 --> 22:54.334
presenting on a myriad of things.
22:55.558 --> 22:58.957
And so I look forward to our conversation today,
22:59.021 --> 23:02.824
Chris. So you didn't answer my hot dog. Like, are you a Chicago-style hot dog
23:03.324 --> 23:06.741
guy? Are you into Italian beef? If you're a Chicago guy, I mean,
23:07.077 --> 23:10.586
Chicago hot dogs are a unique thing
23:11.083 --> 23:14.704
and everybody has their favorite place. Of course, I'm a fan of a
23:15.204 --> 23:19.078
Portillo's hot dog. Yep. I don't need the sport peppers on there,
23:19.190 --> 23:22.282
but everything else on there I'm gonna eat. I don't need ketchup on it,
23:22.298 --> 23:25.455
but I will put mustard on there. And of course,
23:25.823 --> 23:29.733
an Italian beef, or as we call it, I love a combo sandwich in
23:29.765 --> 23:33.418
Chicago, which is Italian beef and Italian
23:33.514 --> 23:36.690
sausage. with some like sweet peppers on it.
23:37.525 --> 23:41.232
I think I've done that maybe once. So I was just— it's
23:41.732 --> 23:44.523
a long story short, I was just in Chicago, brought my son there for a
23:45.023 --> 23:48.455
concert, literally dropped him off so he could go do the concert.
23:48.856 --> 23:52.146
And then I went— and what was the place you just said
23:52.646 --> 23:55.950
again? I went to Portillo's, which is a chain in Chicago. Yeah, that's where I
23:56.062 --> 23:59.529
went. So funny. So literally dropped him off
24:00.029 --> 24:03.285
at the show. I went to a restaurant, got an Italian beef sandwich, ate that
24:03.785 --> 24:05.693
thing in my car, waited for the show to be over, picked him up kind
24:06.193 --> 24:09.001
of thing. You got asked a lot of questions about your Italian beef too,
24:09.081 --> 24:12.388
right? Like, do you want it dry? Do you want it dipped? Do you want
24:12.888 --> 24:16.193
it like soaked? Right? Like a little bit intimidating if you're not used
24:16.225 --> 24:20.527
to it. It is. Yeah. But delicious nonetheless. 1000% delicious.
24:20.640 --> 24:24.172
Yeah. Okay. So you use Lumu, uh, or you used to
24:24.672 --> 24:26.853
use Lumu, uh, and that's what we want to talk a little bit about today.
24:27.462 --> 24:31.435
And again, I guess to take that half step back, what problem were you trying
24:31.467 --> 24:35.345
to solve when you first started looking into Lumu? Well, I think, Chris,
24:35.457 --> 24:39.030
it starts for me, like I saw what was starting to happen
24:39.783 --> 24:43.644
to, you know, every industry, right? Like it didn't
24:44.144 --> 24:47.297
matter if it was K-12, higher ed, finance,
24:47.409 --> 24:49.444
banking, you know, healthcare,
24:50.774 --> 24:54.667
people were getting hit with cyberattacks, right? Like starting in 2019,
24:54.683 --> 24:58.320
I remember vividly, Um, a school district
24:58.820 --> 25:03.336
not far from Chicago called Rockford, um, had a major ransomware
25:03.836 --> 25:07.726
attack, and like their technology was down for 3 months. Can you imagine
25:07.758 --> 25:11.524
being a teacher in this day and age and not having your
25:12.024 --> 25:15.081
laptop and having availability to do what you do every day?
25:15.674 --> 25:18.862
Right. For, for more than, for more than a couple of days,
25:18.959 --> 25:22.307
right? Like, we, our teachers get freaked out when we have an
25:22.420 --> 25:25.545
internet outage, right? Like, Comcast or AT&T
25:26.045 --> 25:29.312
goes offline and people are like, how long is this going to be? When's this
25:29.812 --> 25:32.822
going to be done? And Rockford got knocked out for like 3 months.
25:33.784 --> 25:37.326
Um, and certainly being a part of my COSIN chapter,
25:38.031 --> 25:41.461
um, and hearing stories of what was happening to peers,
25:42.199 --> 25:45.677
uh, it just made cybersecurity like something you just had to
25:46.177 --> 25:49.668
stay on top of. Um, and being that the— this last
25:50.168 --> 25:54.034
school district that I worked for was in my mind somebody that
25:54.082 --> 25:57.826
was a high-profile target. Even though we are a small
25:58.436 --> 26:02.199
school district, we are a name brand. Like, we are a marquee.
26:02.521 --> 26:06.080
Like, if you were to take us down in ransomware attack
26:06.145 --> 26:08.448
or, you know, have some kind of data breach,
26:10.344 --> 26:14.069
it would be front-page news in Chicago
26:14.150 --> 26:18.559
and probably nationally because we're just a really successful
26:18.835 --> 26:23.435
academic institution. And so, I always took cybersecurity
26:23.548 --> 26:27.523
really seriously and always
26:27.700 --> 26:30.986
would listen to and hear about
26:31.486 --> 26:34.737
more solutions because the adversary
26:34.769 --> 26:38.280
is always changing and adapting, right? Yeah. Like, this is their— we know
26:38.360 --> 26:40.861
that, like, the adversary, this is their full-time gig.
26:42.288 --> 26:46.183
And even though I might get a solution that handles this,
26:46.713 --> 26:50.837
I had to be— I was looking at what was protecting my
26:50.885 --> 26:54.721
student devices. And I really did— we were a 1-to-1 iPad district.
26:54.978 --> 26:58.893
We didn't have a solution for— it would just be too expensive
26:59.393 --> 27:02.023
to buy a solution for iPads, at least so we thought.
27:02.905 --> 27:06.934
And then we have all these IoT devices that are on our network,
27:06.950 --> 27:10.609
right? I get a lot of additional things that are on our network
27:11.109 --> 27:14.704
that don't have any kind of protection on them. And as I started
27:15.204 --> 27:18.543
to do my research on Lumu, you know,
27:18.640 --> 27:22.536
their model, one, was cost-effective, and two,
27:23.965 --> 27:27.580
they allowed us to do a proof of concept
27:27.757 --> 27:31.115
to validate, like, how the product would work and how it could
27:31.615 --> 27:34.779
protect my environment for any
27:34.891 --> 27:37.865
device, right, that is communicating within my network.
27:38.411 --> 27:41.516
And even for these student devices, when these student
27:42.016 --> 27:45.766
devices were going home, And so certainly I did
27:45.815 --> 27:48.926
my due diligence looking at the product and testing
27:49.023 --> 27:53.842
it out, but also really just talking
27:53.956 --> 27:58.472
to other peers, right? Talking to other school districts who
27:58.972 --> 28:02.737
had been using this product. I specifically talked to a
28:03.237 --> 28:06.826
CTO who had been the CIO for Detroit
28:06.842 --> 28:11.576
Public Schools who had moved on and was kind of managing technology
28:11.961 --> 28:15.524
and cybersecurity for like 20 different school
28:15.556 --> 28:19.552
districts in Michigan. And just hearing his story
28:19.970 --> 28:23.597
of— it's one of these products too, Chris, where you set it and forget
28:24.097 --> 28:27.609
it, right? Okay. Like, you just let it— you understand
28:28.109 --> 28:32.167
this probably, right? Like, my IT people that work on my network
28:32.667 --> 28:36.324
team, they're not full-time cybersecurity analysts,
28:36.356 --> 28:40.351
right? They don't have time to be managing and
28:40.544 --> 28:44.001
looking at. I just need something that runs and takes
28:44.501 --> 28:48.659
care of the adversary. And that's what I really liked about really any
28:49.159 --> 28:52.918
cybersecurity solution is that it was going to have a technology,
28:53.570 --> 28:57.538
a machine learning that really handled
28:58.038 --> 29:01.923
that and was hands-off for my tech team. And so that was probably
29:01.955 --> 29:05.457
the other piece that was really appealing to me as
29:05.553 --> 29:09.480
well. So Lumu does your threat detection
29:09.513 --> 29:13.501
and it does response stuff. So it's giving
29:13.517 --> 29:17.403
you visibility into all of your devices, not just Windows, not just Chromebook,
29:17.548 --> 29:20.763
all your devices. And then a lot of that
29:21.263 --> 29:25.020
becomes automated. So I guess, can you give me examples
29:25.437 --> 29:28.894
or if you have a quick
29:29.394 --> 29:32.405
story of something that Lumu did that I don't know,
29:32.453 --> 29:35.707
that you were pumped about or that it was like that great response, some visibility
29:35.756 --> 29:38.529
that you saw that you didn't have before kind of thing? Yeah.
29:38.625 --> 29:42.424
So, I think for me, certainly, as I
29:42.472 --> 29:46.255
said, I didn't have visibility into where my students
29:46.384 --> 29:50.247
were going. Certainly, we had an enterprise-grade
29:50.747 --> 29:53.244
firewall that was doing its piece,
29:53.854 --> 29:57.028
but students are going and staff are going
29:57.140 --> 30:00.956
to websites. And sometimes the filter catches
30:01.052 --> 30:05.045
it, but I don't— you know, there's so much traffic when you have—
30:05.703 --> 30:09.134
our students had, of course, a 1-to-1. Our employees
30:09.166 --> 30:13.368
had a 2-to-1. Our employees also would
30:13.416 --> 30:16.863
be assigned an iPad besides their district-assigned laptop.
30:17.505 --> 30:21.241
And then we had a BYOD where people could put their phones
30:21.337 --> 30:24.496
on our network, and I wanted all of those devices to
30:24.544 --> 30:28.221
really be protected even if they were personal devices.
30:29.457 --> 30:33.439
And what I saw in the first 30 days of this is
30:33.471 --> 30:38.176
that at all times of the day, like, we have 24/7
30:38.288 --> 30:41.981
staff that work in our building. I was having custodial staff
30:42.481 --> 30:46.686
that at 2:00 in the morning were on their personal phone going
30:46.798 --> 30:50.700
to some kind of website. Yeah. And clicking
30:50.796 --> 30:54.762
on something, and clearly it was a, a malware-type
30:55.262 --> 30:59.242
site or some kind of website that had malicious
30:59.742 --> 31:02.871
intentions. And within a minute or 2,
31:03.497 --> 31:07.720
it was identifying it. It was writing a rule— like,
31:07.752 --> 31:11.814
it was almost like writing an ACL to our firewall and immediately
31:11.846 --> 31:15.603
blocking that for that individual as well as for anyone
31:16.103 --> 31:19.744
else that would have tried to go to this website. That's awesome. And as I
31:19.793 --> 31:23.782
said, like, I don't have analysts that are sitting there and looking at
31:24.282 --> 31:28.172
all this traffic, right? Like, Lumu is leveraging
31:28.364 --> 31:32.242
the knowledge base that is out there of all these different companies that
31:32.786 --> 31:36.295
flag and identify these malicious websites,
31:37.641 --> 31:41.182
and it just takes care of it. And we
31:41.682 --> 31:44.995
can sit there and wait and find out, like, if somebody
31:45.011 --> 31:48.520
came to us and said, hey, I tried to go to this resource and
31:48.568 --> 31:51.693
I'm getting blocked, I can't get to it. We could go in
31:51.901 --> 31:55.363
at that point in time and go evaluate it. But like,
31:55.507 --> 31:59.000
as I— in the first 30 days, Chris, I had 30 or 40— I
31:59.048 --> 32:02.221
was having, um, multiples of these
32:02.654 --> 32:05.859
within the first 30 days of, of, of the
32:06.359 --> 32:09.993
month. And, um, I am still kind of a
32:10.105 --> 32:13.519
quiet consultant for the school district that I just retired
32:13.535 --> 32:17.854
from. I still have an email account there. I still get Lumu notifications.
32:18.063 --> 32:21.483
Mm-hmm. Anytime that, like, in the school year, we're— they're,
32:21.499 --> 32:24.615
um, they're close to, uh, 3 weeks into the
32:25.115 --> 32:29.032
school year. Um, and, and I, I get Lumu notifications
32:29.532 --> 32:32.629
almost every day of something that somebody is
32:32.725 --> 32:35.712
clicking on, sometimes 2 or 3 a day. Uh,
32:35.937 --> 32:39.310
and, and I don't really need to know what they are. I just
32:39.810 --> 32:43.654
wanna know that they're getting blocked. Yep. And that our devices and our
32:44.154 --> 32:48.180
network are being protected because it's that automation
32:48.808 --> 32:51.032
of just taking care of it.
32:52.937 --> 32:56.229
And like I said, if an employee came to us and had
32:56.729 --> 33:00.234
an issue and said, hey, I can't get access to this, we could then go
33:00.266 --> 33:03.452
into Lumu and look at what happened. But not a
33:03.952 --> 33:07.074
single time during our proof of concept,
33:07.219 --> 33:09.445
our onboarding at the beginning of May,
33:10.164 --> 33:14.262
Like, I didn't have a single incident where, like, Lumu screwed
33:14.762 --> 33:18.811
up, if you want to say, and inadvertently blocked something that was legitimate.
33:18.876 --> 33:22.945
Like, it was doing its job and taking
33:22.977 --> 33:27.173
care of it. Certainly, it was going to be a culture shift
33:27.478 --> 33:31.057
for my students because you have to force
33:32.782 --> 33:38.145
a browser— like, you have to use the native You
33:38.645 --> 33:42.792
have to use the native Apple Safari browser
33:43.292 --> 33:46.938
for this to work. So you couldn't allow students to use Chrome
33:46.986 --> 33:51.352
or some other browser. But to me, that's like a simple trade-off.
33:51.983 --> 33:55.605
Sure. For what we were getting in terms of cybersecurity protection.
33:57.360 --> 34:00.988
Because again, I don't know where my kids are going. I don't
34:01.488 --> 34:04.910
know what they're clicking on. And high school kids are smart,
34:05.424 --> 34:08.574
right? Like, they could know where
34:09.074 --> 34:13.057
they're going. They might not know. And I'd rather just take the conservative approach
34:13.557 --> 34:18.279
of let's block as much as we can that is identified as potentially
34:18.779 --> 34:22.971
malicious. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the implementation.
34:23.036 --> 34:26.748
So you mentioned, you know, so maybe culture shift a little bit with what
34:26.796 --> 34:30.311
your kids are going to use. Can you— you don't have to deep
34:30.811 --> 34:34.001
dive into it, but talk to me about what did that look like to get
34:34.501 --> 34:37.674
things going? Is this an appliance that you bring in, or is this just something
34:37.690 --> 34:40.978
that's cloud-based, like, that you're pushing out particular things, or what? Yeah,
34:41.059 --> 34:44.540
I would say it's really very simple to implement.
34:44.604 --> 34:48.373
You're really just setting up, you know,
34:48.454 --> 34:52.624
you're turning on your account, you're doing— you're
34:52.689 --> 34:56.976
setting up a virtual machine that's in your environment.
34:57.828 --> 35:01.657
That virtual machine is talking to your firewall,
35:01.769 --> 35:05.371
and so you're making that connection.
35:07.538 --> 35:11.152
And then, you're just kind of letting it run and see what was
35:11.185 --> 35:15.187
happening. And initially, Chris, we weren't making any changes.
35:15.840 --> 35:19.595
We weren't pushing— You can push out an agent that sits on
35:19.938 --> 35:23.756
all of the machines, Like, if you want that kind of granularity
35:24.814 --> 35:28.775
on your Windows laptops, your MacBook Pros,
35:28.791 --> 35:31.549
because we have a blended environment, your desktops.
35:32.367 --> 35:36.023
We just wanted to kind of like let it sit and run.
35:36.761 --> 35:39.808
And so we did that for a week and already started, you know, I think
35:40.308 --> 35:43.913
the first day we did this, we were already starting to see results
35:44.413 --> 35:48.387
from it. And then Lumu just follows up with you and
35:48.467 --> 35:52.216
meets and continues to talk with you. And then, as you and your team
35:52.472 --> 35:55.933
are ready to begin to kind of grow and
35:56.013 --> 35:59.667
kind of scale, you can do that at
35:59.683 --> 36:03.320
your pace, right? Like, typically, you're not going to go push out
36:04.409 --> 36:07.854
any kind of agent on devices without,
36:07.966 --> 36:12.004
like, first testing it and making sure, like, that it's
36:12.116 --> 36:15.609
not having an adverse impact on performance of those devices.
36:16.861 --> 36:20.025
So, you know, our approach was going to be, let's put this on a couple
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of technology department machines and let's see
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how it works for people that are on our network team or people that are
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on our data team and see if they have any performance issues
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before then we scale it. And let's see what's
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happening with how it was impacting students
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on their iPads. And so we did some testing with just like a
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specific grade-level class. And so we did a, you know,
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we have close to 3,800 students in Lowe's. So let's test it
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with our freshmen, which is a little over 900 students,
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and see how that works first before, again, we look at scaling
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it en masse. I like it. I guess maybe
37:05.846 --> 37:10.117
last question, unless we talk about hot dogs or Italian beef sandwiches again, but If
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I'm a tech director and I don't really have my cybersecurity
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stuff figured out, I guess what advice would you give me on
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how to get started and what products to look at? Yeah. But even that
37:21.677 --> 37:25.576
segue over into how you ended up landing with Lumu, what advice
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would you give? Certainly, I think you have
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to look at, you have to evaluate your own environment. You have
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to look at like what is most critical, like where are
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the threat actors really attacking First,
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and so for us, the critical infrastructure for me was
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certainly our server environment, making sure that our disaster
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recovery solution was something that was air-gapped, or at least it had like
37:55.416 --> 37:59.416
a multi-factor. You know, two people have to authorize
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backups to be deleted because that's like the latest strategy, right? Like let's
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get in. Let's delete all their backups so that we kind
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of, we have leverage when we want to get money
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out of this organization. So making sure, like, I made
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sure that those things were addressed first and then look at the resources
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I have. And so can I then scale this to employee devices?
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And then I think the next biggest area for me was
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like, you get so many of these— everyone
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wants to attack identity, right? They want to get your credentials.
38:39.322 --> 38:43.100
They want you to click on something. They want you to engage. They want
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you to give your— they want you to click on something and type
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in your password so that they can then replicate what they're doing.
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They can get into the environment and start to study and
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then strategically get into your environment
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evaluate like how they can attack you. Um, and so I needed, I needed it,
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I needed products that were really going to,
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um, almost be like an email gateway, uh,
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to block all of this, you know, phishing,
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spear phishing, you name it, that was hitting,
39:17.791 --> 39:21.355
um, at least our email environment. Um,
39:22.270 --> 39:25.625
it— but the, the where Lumu came into me as well as
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something that I saw is this I didn't have control over
39:30.138 --> 39:33.898
email systems for people's personal email accounts, and I know that people
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are using those personal email accounts on district
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devices. And I know that people— because I was seeing devices get malware
39:42.028 --> 39:45.482
on them, uh, and getting, you know,
39:45.498 --> 39:48.454
called by our, our XDR solution that,
39:49.097 --> 39:52.583
um, they had to lock down a machine because they, they had
39:53.083 --> 39:55.753
something that somebody had clicked on.
39:58.782 --> 40:02.857
So having a solution that really addressed
40:03.357 --> 40:06.407
areas that were gaps for me,
40:07.876 --> 40:11.264
which was why I looked at the Lumu product, and I really
40:11.764 --> 40:15.907
became aware of it by being at a national technology
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conference, talking to peers,
40:19.147 --> 40:24.540
hearing their story, And again, starting to study and
40:24.556 --> 40:28.049
then kick the tires and see the value proposition
40:29.209 --> 40:33.173
of what this investment would look like
40:33.238 --> 40:36.688
and what that return on the investment would look like for our organization.
40:37.852 --> 40:41.402
And if I was to give advice, Chris, to any technology leader,
40:41.482 --> 40:45.354
CTO, director, like, as you start to
40:45.402 --> 40:48.521
find these solutions and evaluate, like, what your needs are,
40:49.136 --> 40:52.586
I always brought this back to my CFO,
40:52.699 --> 40:55.747
our CSBO, and our superintendent to
40:56.247 --> 40:59.727
say, these are— this is an option for us. This is what this
41:00.227 --> 41:03.834
is going to provide. I'm recommending we purchase this,
41:04.155 --> 41:07.461
but this is a joint decision on these kinds
41:07.961 --> 41:12.323
of investments, right? Yeah. Because if you as the technology leader
41:12.823 --> 41:16.270
are recommending it and the top leadership don't want to
41:16.350 --> 41:20.404
buy it, you've made a collective decision because when
41:20.420 --> 41:23.817
crap hits the fan and you're in the middle of a cyberattack,
41:24.522 --> 41:28.527
right? Sometimes financial decisions that were made
41:29.008 --> 41:32.677
by that team will, like, people reflect
41:33.177 --> 41:37.195
on it. And so sometimes the technology leader doesn't want to bring that
41:37.695 --> 41:40.784
to the forefront. They didn't, you know, they make the choice themselves. They don't
41:41.284 --> 41:44.838
even bring it to their CFO, CSBO,
41:45.190 --> 41:48.433
and superintendent. they don't talk about cybersecurity enough.
41:48.498 --> 41:52.627
They don't share the stories of what are happening in
41:53.127 --> 41:57.132
their peer districts and what the tools are that
41:57.632 --> 42:01.981
are available to try and block these things. So, and if the superintendent
42:02.481 --> 42:06.320
and the finance— the person who really has the purse strings on
42:06.820 --> 42:09.726
this don't know about it, they can't say yes or no.
42:10.453 --> 42:14.200
But certainly, if you're in the middle of a ransomware attack, a data
42:14.700 --> 42:18.243
breach, it's all hands on board, right? And everyone
42:18.743 --> 42:22.354
is going to be stuck in the middle of managing that disaster.
42:22.819 --> 42:26.801
Yeah. And so, I think it's the technology leader's responsibility
42:27.475 --> 42:30.863
to educate, to share what's going on, to recommend
42:31.363 --> 42:35.503
solutions. And so, I still, even though I'm retired, Chris, I still
42:36.003 --> 42:39.517
sit in meetings. I still go to presentations. I still continue to
42:39.597 --> 42:43.595
learn about these things. Because I think we have
42:44.095 --> 42:47.833
to— certainly I still talk to other technology leaders
42:48.572 --> 42:50.980
and just want to stay educated in this space.
42:51.863 --> 42:55.379
That's good advice. All right, 2 quick questions.
42:55.957 --> 42:58.782
One, do you put sport peppers on your hot dog?
42:59.730 --> 43:02.876
I do not. If I
43:03.376 --> 43:06.954
get something that's really spicy, Chris, my genetics
43:07.454 --> 43:09.459
are such that I start to sweat like a dog.
43:10.727 --> 43:13.775
Um, so the sport peppers, even, you know,
43:14.417 --> 43:18.364
I, I do like good banana peppers, but I, I cannot— like, a sport pepper
43:18.864 --> 43:21.893
is just a little too much heat for me. And then last question, do you
43:22.393 --> 43:25.471
do the celery salt or do you not? Oh, absolutely. Celery salt,
43:25.888 --> 43:29.466
100%. I even, Chris, I even have celery salt in
43:29.514 --> 43:32.771
my home so that when I'm making a dog at home,
43:32.883 --> 43:36.268
I can make my own Chicago-style dog. And you gotta get You
43:36.332 --> 43:40.113
got to get the poppy seed bun, which authenticates
43:40.338 --> 43:43.670
a real Chicago dog. I love it. And at some point in
43:43.766 --> 43:47.564
time, Chris, we got to talk Chicago pizza because it is a thing of
43:47.868 --> 43:51.889
itself too. I don't know the pizza as well. So maybe
43:51.954 --> 43:55.174
you'll come back on sometime. We'll talk through pizza.
43:55.238 --> 43:58.971
That sounds good. Well, Michael, it's been good hanging out with you and
43:59.003 --> 44:02.288
in particular talking about— well, for one, talking about nostalgia.
44:02.512 --> 44:04.723
I loved our conversation at the very beginning here.
44:06.038 --> 44:08.651
from Teacher to Tech, and you've been in the K-12 tech game for a while
44:09.261 --> 44:12.580
and loved our Chicago-style talk as well, but also love talking about Lumu. So check
44:12.692 --> 44:15.883
out lumu.io. Check out Lumu.
44:16.075 --> 44:19.972
They can do detection, response, threats in real time.
44:20.116 --> 44:23.098
Michael, thank you so much. Chris, can I add one last thing? For sure.
44:23.146 --> 44:26.931
Certainly, if people want a firsthand story about this,
44:27.139 --> 44:30.987
I'm available on LinkedIn. People can reach out to me. I can
44:31.051 --> 44:34.766
share a firsthand story of 'Cause that's
44:35.266 --> 44:38.248
how business is done. Tech directors talk to other tech directors,
44:39.154 --> 44:43.394
share the good and the bad of how partners
44:43.491 --> 44:47.460
are. And I would tell you, Lumu's one of those good cybersecurity
44:47.525 --> 44:50.749
partners. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yep. Thanks,
44:50.782 --> 44:50.976
Chris.
45:02.665 --> 45:05.874
The views and opinions expressed on the K-12 Tech Talk
45:06.374 --> 45:09.788
podcast are the personal opinions of Josh, Chris, and Mark, and do not represent
45:10.288 --> 45:13.895
the views or opinions of our sponsors or other organizations that we're affiliated with.
45:14.393 --> 45:17.970
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
45:18.470 --> 45:22.495
purposes only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. We were buying words
45:22.995 --> 45:26.618
about the phrase of the day and selling songs
45:26.650 --> 45:28.591
just to stay in the queue.