Letter to Reps Griffith and Castor on Using E-rate to Connect and Protect Schools and Libraries

Abstract

Schools and libraries currently are subject to persistent and harmful cyberattacks. Successful attacks impose substantial costs on communities and institutions and severely harm individuals, including through lost instructional time, identity theft (students, library patrons, and school and library employees), loss of community trust, increased administrative burdens for state and local government, and the theft and waste of scarce public resources. Given the significant repercussions of cyberattacks, including far-reaching privacy harms to students, library patrons and staff, our organizations recently urged the Federal Communications Commission, responding to the agency’s request for public comment, to modernize the Schools and Libraries Universal Service program (“E-rate”) to better support school and library cybersecurity including by:

Making advanced or next-generation firewalls and related features eligible for E-rate Category 2 support beginning in 2024. Increasing Category 2 funding levels, within the E-rate program's existing aggregate cap, to cover modern firewalls. Providing this limited E-rate cybersecurity support in a manner that is minimally burdensome to applicants, allowing schools and libraries to select the modern firewall technology best suited to their specific needs.