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WATCH: Cybersecurity and Protecting Student Data – School Transportation News

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WATCH: Cybersecurity and Protecting Student Data – School Transportation News

This content is brought to you by ALC Schools.

Protecting student data is incredibly important when it comes to cybersecurity and school districts working with an alternative transportation vendor. With that being said, ALC Schools takes cybersecurity very seriously, ensuring student data and its overarching technology are fully protected.

In this episode of our Focus on the One series, Abi Studer interviews ALC’s Chief Technology Officer Bryan Glenn and Security Administrator Brian Kwiecinski on the topic of student data protection in light of Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Interview Transcription

Abi Studer (AS): Hi, I’m Abi Studer with ALC. Today I have Bryan Glenn, ALC’s CTO, and Brian Kwiecinski, our security administrator. They’re joining me to talk about cybersecurity – especially as it relates to student data. Thank you Bryan and Brian for joining me today.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, but that’s such a broad topic. We wanted to bring a little bit more focus just to student data specifically.

Student Data Protection

AS: So, when talking about student data, what information actually needs to be protected?

Brian Kwiecinski (BK): Well, I think one of the kind of big buzzwords in cybersecurity is PII, which is personally identifiable information. And essentially, it’s anything that can, either directly or through correlation with other bits of information, be used to identify you [and] find out personal information there. And I think that is one of the biggest things in terms of student data is if it can be identified to the student, anything like addresses, medical history, things like that, or anything to do with like sensitive educational information on there.

AS: So, when speaking about school districts, what are some of the challenges that they may have when trying to safeguard that information?

Bryan Glenn (BG): I think the challenge for school districts often is that there are a number of software platforms out there to help them do their jobs on a daily basis. And I think knowing where data is going, being able to track that data, understanding whether or not platforms integrate with other platforms, how that data is shared across, and other third party platforms. That’s a challenging task for school districts that they have to track this information and really do their due diligence around vendors that they use. It’s a challenging task.

AS: So, the information is the PII. As far as safeguarding it and keeping track of the vendors, double checking to make sure that your vendors are taking the same steps as the school district themselves in order to safeguard that PII, what are some of the risks that school districts open themselves up to when they share maybe too much information? And are there are risks associated with maybe sharing too little information?

BK: I think one of the main risks of sharing too much information is where is this information going to go after me? So like, after you’ve already shared to the initial party. And I think a lot of it is knowing who should know, and if someone doesn’t have a need to know, it’s probably better to not share …….

Source: https://stnonline.com/partner-updates/watch-cybersecurity-and-protecting-student-data/