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REDLANDS CHRISTIAN SCHOOL · IT DEPARTMENT
Eagle Tech Weekly
Issue #1 · Sunday, April 19, 2026
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🦅 A Word from Eagle Byte
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Hey, Eagle Byte here! 👋 You might recognize me from Zendesk — I’m the little eagle mascot who shows up when you submit a ticket. Steve and the IT crew put this newsletter together each week, and they let me tag along to deliver it with a little more personality and a lot less corporate jargon. 🦅
Welcome to Eagle Tech Weekly — a byte-sized (get it?) look at what IT is up to, what to watch out for, and how to keep your tech humming along. Every Sunday. Short. Useful. Occasionally funny. 🚀
This week’s theme starts with one tiny, terrifying question…
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“When’s the last time you clicked Allow?”
Exactly. Nobody remembers. That’s the problem. 👀
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🔍 Storytime with Eagle Byte
Picture this: a tech company called Vercel. Full security team. MFA everywhere. All the fancy stuff. Last week — boom — breached. 💥
How? No password stolen. No MFA cracked. No 2 AM movie-style hacker typing furiously in a hoodie. Someone, somewhere, clicked one tiny button: Allow. 🔒→🔓
An app (owned by a smaller vendor Vercel worked with) politely asked for “read my mail” and “browse my files” permission. Someone said yes. Attackers walked in through that open door. No alarms. No prompts. Game. Over. 🎲
🦅 Byte’s note: Schools are softer targets than tech companies. We have less budget, more student data, and more well-intentioned people clicking things quickly between bells. Let’s not be the next headline.
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📚 Byte’s Cheat Sheet · OAuth in 30 seconds
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🚨 The Problem
Supply-chain chain reaction
Attackers hit a small vendor to reach the big company.
OAuth tokens skip past MFA. Once granted, the app has a digital house key.
Schools = soft targets. Less budget, more student data.
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🚩 Red Flags
What compromise looks like
Unknown apps in your Google or Microsoft account.
Huge permissions like “read all mail” or “full Drive access.”
Sign-ins from places you’ve never been.
New inbox rules you didn’t create.
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✅ The Solution
What to do
1. Pause. If you don’t know the app, don’t click Allow.
2. Ask Byte. Open a Zendesk ticket — I’ll triage it fast.
3. Let IT audit. We check every 90 days, but your tips help.
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🧠 Byte’s 3-second gut check
Before you click Allow, ask yourself:
1. Do I actually recognize this app?
2. Does it need this much access to do its job?
3. Would I hand this same info to a stranger at the door?
Any “not sure”? Ping IT. We’d rather spend 2 minutes checking an app than 2 weeks cleaning up a breach. 💪
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🏆 Your IT Humans Crushed It This Week
While you were running testing week, here’s what they shipped behind the scenes (Byte reporting live from Zendesk HQ) 📺:
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OAuth app review. Audited every third-party app connected to your RCS Microsoft and Google accounts. A few shady ones are no longer on the guest list. 👋
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Testing week support. Networks held, Chromebooks charged, browsers cooperated. “No news” is the best news in IT. 😎
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Backup infrastructure went live. Your files now get a nightly backup to the school NAS with 30 days of versioned snapshots. Deleted a file? We’ve got you. 🙏
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Securly rollout started. New web filtering + classroom visibility for teachers is in Phase 1. More in future issues. 🔎
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Camtasia tutorials launched. IT just leveled up our training video game. Expect short, clean walkthroughs dropping in future issues. 🎓
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🎥 Want the Full Story? · Byte’s Deep Dive Pick
Steve recorded a full walkthrough of how the Vercel breach actually went down and what it means for schools like ours. Grab a coffee, hit play, and let him do the heavy lifting. ☕
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▶ Watch on YouTube
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The Invisible Backdoor: OAuth and The Vercel Breach
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A shameless plug from Byte — but honestly, this one’s worth 10 minutes of your life. 🦅
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🖥 Coming Up Next Week
Securly Phase 2 goes live, Chromebook summer refresh preview, and a very important question — do you actually know what’s living inside your browser extensions? (Spoiler: probably not. Byte will tell all.) 🕵
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The best security tool we have isn’t a firewall. It’s you, pausing 3 seconds before you click Allow.
🦅 Byte out. Back to the ticket queue. See you in Zendesk — or next Sunday, whichever comes first.
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RCS IT Help Desk
Redlands Christian School · Educating for Eternity · Made for More
EAGLE TECH WEEKLY · ISSUE #1 · 04.19.2026
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