26 Nov School Data Security
Is Your School Data Safe, Secure and Backed Up?
Did you know that 15% of all reported data breaches take place in the education industry? Is your school data safe, secure and backed up? Schools and educational institutions collect a large amount of data from their students, staff and parents. Keeping that data safe has to be a primary concern for any school. Schools most have data policies in place to ensure that data is backed up and does not fall into the wrong hands. Luckily, there are some basic measures that can be taken to keep your school’s data safe from prying eyes.
Safety Requirements for Schools
The best thing that your school can do to keep their data safe is to implement some very basic security and safety measures for protecting data. A good starting point is requiring that every machine have up to date antivirus and anti-malware software installed. Additionally, it is a good idea to require that those pieces of software are run on a daily or weekly basis. Data theft commonly comes from programs that have been unknowingly installed on a computer and taking some basic initial steps to reduce risk is an excellent first step. Additionally, staff should be trained on navigating the web, opening emails and downloading attachments to ensure that they are implementing the best practices.
Protecting Sensitive Pupil and Staff Data
Your databases contain a lot of sensitive information about your students and staff, and it is very important that those records do not fall into the wrong hands. Effective security starts with proper training for those that will have access to information. Ensure that your staff accounts have the permissions properly setup for all access to sensitive data. Only employees that require access to specific information should have access. Additionally, ensure that your employees have a way of knowing who can have access to what data, so that they do not inadvertently send sensitive data to the wrong person.
Reliable Backups
All schools must have a reliable backup facility for all data. It is best to have both on-site and off-site processes in place to mitigate the risk of data loss. Institute policies regarding backup frequency. In many cases, offsite services can provide daily backups at a scheduled time, outside of school operation hours. This helps to ensure that your network is not bogged down while the backups take place. But, dealing with large amounts of data means that you must also keep on-site backups handy should a system failure take place.
Local and Cloud Based Backup Options
At Trusol, we make full solutions available to companies in the education sector. Our local solutions begin with proper infrastructure. We help your school install or revamp existing data cabling, electrical services, IP networking, Wi-Fi and IP CCTV. We can ensure that all data from your facility is backed up locally and in the cloud. We can help your school implement daily local backup processes to keep your data safe.
Additionally, most schools will also opt for some sort of cloud solution. There are many cloud data storage solutions available today. Popular solutions that are targeted directly for schools include mySchoolBackup, Gridstore and the iDrive solution for schools.
Can Data be Recovered and Reinstated Quickly
The determining factor in whether or not data can be recovered and reinstated quickly depends entirely on the quality of the backups that are in place. Both physical local backups and cloud backups are great for quickly reinstating data with minimal downtime. But, should true data loss occur without backups in place, it can take some time to restore lost data after a critical system failure. Additionally, there is no guarantee that all data will be recoverable. In some instances, no data or partial data is the best that can be hoped for.
If you would like to ensure that your school data is safe and backed up frequently, please contact us today. We will help you implement effective local and cloud backup solutions while keeping your data safe.