Education Groups Seek E-rate Funds for Cybersecurity
On February 8, 2021, the Consortium for School Networking, the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Council of the Great City Schools, the Schools, Health, & Libraries Broadband Coalition, the State Educational Technology Directors Association, and the State E-rate Coordinators’ Alliance (“Petitioners”) filed a petition for rulemaking.
The Petitioners are asking the Commission to:
- define all firewall and related features as “basic” beginning in funding year 2021;
- increase the five-year Category 2 budget cap in future funding years to support needed additional cybersecurity investments; and
- update the agency’s broadband definition to include cybersecurity.
In order to implement relief immediately for FY 2021, the Petitioners also requested that the Commission issue a declaratory order or waive the Eligible Services List to allow firewalls to be “fully eligible” for Category 2 funding in FY 2021. Currently, applicants often have to prorate their funding requests to omit the costs of features that are considered “further network security services,” as defined by the Commission in its 2014 Modernization Orders. The currently ineligible services include DDoS; ransomware prevention and restoration services; content filtering to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA); and redundant services in case of a cyberattack.
The Petition noted that an additional $81 per student would be necessary to cover the costs of the firewall services, based on a CoSN and Funds for Learning report last year.
The Commission has not yet put the petition out for comment.
