With an increasing number of digital attacks aimed at the education sector, the protection of student data has become a high priority for K-12 schools nationwide. The SREB reports that over one million student records have been affected by cyber attacks in the past two years. It’s therefore critical that all school districts implement comprehensive digital privacy and data protection standards in order to maintain data privacy and ensure continued public confidence in their IT capabilities.

Yet with the growing variety of software and hardware that comprise school IT systems, many school districts struggle to find a strong jumping-off point for implementing robust information security policies. This guide is meant to serve as a helpful How-To resource for districts and schools to begin understanding how you can maintain rigorous protection of your students’ data.

Taking a Holistic Approach

A successful student data and information security program requires the effective management of people, processes, and technology to ensure physical and virtual data protection. As such, the first step should be laying out the broad-level factors that will impact security.

You will first need to identify key stakeholders. Understand that you should implement a single, integrated security framework to which the entire district should adhere — the goal is to reduce the complexity of data privacy, promote sound security standards across the board, improve user access, and increase the cost-effectiveness of digital privacy programs. Also, it’s best to separate data governance from management; authority over data should flow logically from the way in which that data is used, which may not match existing hierarchies.

In order to determine and prioritize security efforts, you must do a comprehensive inventory of all sensitive data records, critical data systems, and data streams. Identify the purposes of said data: for what purpose does it need to be collected, and what level of security will it require? Concurrently, you should identify the stakeholders responsible for each set of data and assign appropriate degrees of data authority to them, including a scope of limitations. These roles will determine who has physical and virtual access to sensitive data, as well as who can grant access at each level.

Enforcing a Robust Program

Once those broad-level touch points are identified, you should then begin to enact sound information security policies, principles, and frameworks. Of course, any data management scheme must comply with relevant laws and regulations, such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Children’s Internet Safety Policy (CIPA), as well as any contractual obligations with vendors and internal policies with staff. These policies should outline how data will be handled (data content management), with which tools (data records management), and specify how the accuracy, relevancy, and timeliness of data will be maintained (data quality).

There are also industry best practices that exist outside of government regulation. The most prominent of these, Access for Learning (A4L), offers the industry standard in rules and regulations that define software interoperability. As an active member, Vinson Consulting is working with the A4L community to align those rules with best practices on information security and data privacy. Working with a consultant like Vinson who can vet your district’s information security protocols for A4L compliance may be crucial to the success of your initiative.

The information security program you implement must also include other, oftentimes complex considerations. On the technological side, you should standardize security protocols, incorporate firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDPS), and overall, present a layered digital defense against attacks. Moreover, systems should be able to automatically scan for vulnerabilities, but districts should also perform routine security audits and compliance monitoring. Because data breaches are never completely preventable, a strong security program should also include a robust incident management plan.

All told, a security solution should reduce the complexity of security measures while increasing cost-effectiveness, user accessibility, and the ease of data management — in short, improve IT performance as a whole. It will also enable stakeholders to make more informed decisions with regard to the district’s particular needs and threat levels. Given the enormity of the task, it is strongly advised that district decision-makers partner with consultants who have experience in education security; any work in inefficient directions can easily raise the complexity, and hence, the overall cost of the project.

The threat of compromising a child’s personal privacy and information may be a frightening one, but there’s no reason that you should have to feel as though they are constantly vulnerable to fraud and theft. With information security best practices in place, you can adopt a proactive approach to protecting your students’ confidential records and personal information that leaves the entire district and its key stakeholders informed. This in turn will leave you well-prepared to respond to threats to their personal privacy data and information systems.