The pandemic caused schools around the country to swiftly adopt technology. Even schools that were already making the shift toward buying new edtech products were forced to rapidly speed up that adoption process. At the same time, cyber criminals have increased both the velocity and the sophistication of their attacks against schools. These attacks have caused serious disruptions to districts around the country, not only due to downtime but because of the financial implication of being locked out of system data and being forced to pay ransoms.
Recent Attacks Have Crippled Districts
In June 2022, a New Jersey school district was forced to cancel final exams and revert to using overhead projectors after a ransomware attack shut down their network. That same month, Chicago Public Schools suffered a breach that exposed the private student data of nearly 600,000 students. Since 2016, there have been 1,331 publicly disclosed school cyber incidents affecting U.S. school districts.
Districts Must do More to Protect Student Data
The pandemic forced more educators than ever to use technology. In many instances, they weren’t sufficiently prepared, and many were working from home instead of from the school. School IT leaders were burdened with quickly rolling out solutions to simply keep the schools operational. Now that there is time to formalize the use of technology, schools and districts can step back and evaluate both their policies and the edtech apps they choose to use through the lens of interoperability and student data privacy.
Investing in Cybersecurity Must Be the Priority
Cybersecurity can often be a tempting area to cut from the budget, especially when budgets are so tight. But the price of not investing in cybersecurity can be far more costly to districts in the long run. Making cybersecurity a top priority for your district and working only with edtech solutions committed to student data privacy is the starting point.
Student Data Privacy Is the Law
Through federal regulation, protecting student data is the law. Investing in cybersecurity measures, by default, becomes a necessity for compliance. It is also good governance. But it is costly. GG4L provides schools with a cost-effective way to protect student data and comply with data privacy regulations without incurring added costs. PII Shield, part of GG4L’s School Passport, anonymizes data before it reaches your platform while still allowing for personalization, authentication and communication with end users.
Partner with GG4L and Protect Student Data
GG4L’s School Passport reduces exposure to PII, mitigating risk and costs. School Passport is an iPaaS that empowers schools to centrally:
- Govern the exchange of student, staff, and parent PII data with SaaS vendors.
- Approve and publish apps to a district or school branded on-demand AppStore.
- Delegate to school staff and teachers the ability to activate apps within their managed groups on-demand.
School Passport improves safety, privacy, and security with advanced governance and privacy tools that monitor and regulate the sharing of PII data, including email accounts. Learn more.
