“We all need to do a better job protecting PII (personally identifiable data) for parents and students.” – GG4L founder and CEO, Robert Iskander
Because of the prolific growth in the use of edtech tools by K-12 schools, the risk of compromising data privacy has amplified exponentially. As reported by NPR, an analysis by the cyber security firm Emsisoft found 45 districts reported they were attacked in 2022. In 2023, that number more than doubled.
Protecting PII must become a mission-critical activity in every school.
K-12 Schools Are a Popular Target
The data schools collect is lucrative. This makes schools a bigger target each year from cybercriminals willing to sell the data they able to get. What makes it worse is that district data comprises often go undiscovered until the students apply for college loans or other credit after turning 18.
Protecting PII: Act Now
As districts seek ways to mitigate risk and more aggressively go about protecting PII, it has become clear that the only way forward is better collaboration among all stakeholders. This means schools, edtech vendors, and others must come together to share to create a culture in which data privacy is a top priority.
Earlier this year, GG4L announced the Privacy Governance Console – the first of three major product releases aimed at innovating the edtech data exchange model.
GG4L Privacy Governance Console for Protecting PII
School Passport is a data exchange platform that exchanges any data with any EdTech product, eliminating the need to share student PII. It is easy to implement for schools and vendors. School Passport’s Privacy Governance Console is designed to control school district data sprawl, including personally identifiable information, across the education ecosystem of EdTech vendors.
The Privacy Governance Console provides an innovative PII Shield that restricts the sharing of students personally identifiable information to any vendor. The console offers District IT staff a complete view of edtech applications in use across the district and provides in-depth information on each vendor and application regarding data shared, data privacy agreements and more. Most importantly, districts have the ability to manage PII sharing over time so district IT leaders can proactively limit the number of vendors that access student data directly.
Learn more about how GG4L School Passport’s Privacy Governance Console can help you better manage your district edtech ecosystem to minimize the risk of data breaches and advance your efforts at protecting PII. https://gg4l.com/privacy-governance-console/
