Cloud

Digital Resilience for K–12: Planning for Cloud Outage Continuity

Growing reliance on and threats to cloud connectivity are pushing schools to better prepare for offline learning and operations.

Alexander Slagg

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Alexander Slagg is a freelance writer specializing in technology and education. He is an ongoing contributor to the CDW family of magazines.

For years, K–12 districts have been leaning into cloud-based resources for everything, including productivity suites, learning management systems (LMSs) and student information systems (SISs). Cost-efficiency, scalability and enhanced collaboration are just a few of the benefits gained from anywhere, anytime access to cloud resources.

But this widespread reliance creates challenges when access to the cloud is interrupted. Ransomware attacks, extreme weather events and cloud provider outages can force a district offline, bringing learning and school operations to a halt.

Many schools are now considering how to support digital resilience as part of operational continuity planning for when cloud access is interrupted.

“In a cloud-first world, offline capability still matters,” says Matt Jubelirer, general manager for education marketing at Microsoft. “But the goal is not to build an ‘offline school.’ The real priority for districts today is continuity. When disruption happens, learning should not stop.”

“Schools should not be looking at replicating these e-learning platforms locally,” explains Bill Erdman, director of business and channel development for Arista Networks. “What schools should have in place are contingency plans and backup systems in which they can sustain a partial or major cloud outage condition — specifically, where they can operate in a minimum learning and administration mode until all of their cloud services are restored.”

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Networking for Digital Resilience

Where do schools begin strengthening their digital resilience? At the networking level, schools should focus on building redundancy for in-building LANs and especially at the ISP edge, which is a single point of failure. Losing the primary internet connection impacts everyone in the building.

Secondary ISP services should be provisioned, monitored and managed by the edge device. Because secondary connections are often slower, schools will need to decide which applications are critical for learning and operations.

Many network architectures rely on controller- or cloud-based management, which can be susceptible to outage events. A work-around for this includes a networking architecture focused on a localized data plane approach.

“Arista’s Cognitive Campus architecture addresses these controller-based shortcomings,” says Erdman. “Arista’s cognitive control plan leverages a split architecture where management is centralized, yet the control and data planes remain local. Any loss of cloud services or a centralized appliance service does not impact the forwarding traffic between access points, switches and the SD-WAN appliances. This ensures that any offline learning, which is local within the building or school campus, remains reachable.”

Perimeter security tools should also be a consideration. Many of these are Internet of Things devices, which can leverage Power over Ethernet from Ethernet switches to remain functioning.

Redundancy efforts supporting these devices can include redundant power supplies within the PoE switch itself, UPSs for the switch, and redundant switches using switch stacking or multichassis link aggregations, which ensure a data path and PoE power continuity if one switch fails.

Building out network redundancies can get expensive. The Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program does allow for additional switch and access point redundancies, though it does not fund many advanced security features. Schools must weigh the costs involved to determine where they can deliver the most value.

Just as important is what happens next. Continuity does not end when the network comes back online.”

Matt Jubelirer General Manager for Education Marketing, Microsoft

Device Management for Digital Resilience

Digital resilience planning can be extended into the classroom and administrative offices at the device level as well. Many laptops and tablets and their cloud-based applications can be configured to continue operating when access to the cloud goes down.

“As schools rely more heavily on digital tools, resilience is no longer just about uptime,” explains Jubelirer. “It is about ensuring that teaching, learning and operations can continue whether environments are fully connected, intermittently connected or briefly offline. At Microsoft, we design for that full continuum through how our products and services work together as a system.”

To support digital resilience on school devices, schools must enable offline access to applications, files and media. This process varies by device and manufacturer, but most allow offline features to be enabled over the Wi-Fi network.

Once the device is offline, any file changes are saved locally on the device. Because of this, device storage availability is a digital resilience consideration. When cloud connectivity is restored, any work done offline automatically syncs with the application in the cloud.

“Continuity is not delivered by a single feature,” says Jubelirer. “It comes from a connected experience across Windows, Microsoft 365 and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, which is designed to transition seamlessly between states, connected or offline, synchronous or asynchronous. Our system-level approach means students can keep working on assignments, educators can continue lesson prep or grading, and devices remain usable and secure even when the network drops.”

Planning Before (and After) a Cloud Resource Disruption

Access to the cloud can be interrupted in a number of different ways, all requiring different responses and careful preparation. If it is not already, digital resilience should be a specific consideration in the district’s wider continuity planning, from network architecture down to the individual device level.

“Districts should have contingency plans, and test these plans, where they have bare-minimum resources locally for basic learning and safety measures,” suggests Erdman. “Schools should periodically conduct dry runs to ensure these plans provide the desired outcomes.”

Digital resilience planning also needs to extend to what happens after cloud connectivity is restored.

“Just as important is what happens next. Continuity does not end when the network comes back online,” says Jubelirer. “Educators and students need a clear, low-friction way to understand what they missed and re-engage without losing momentum. That can mean coming back online and quickly reviewing meeting activity, conversations and shared work so users can catch up and move forward without feeling lost. We think of this as the re-entry moment, and it is a core principle of how our platforms work together.”

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