New cybersecurity measures to protect privacy of student data “Even in states where there are privacy laws on the books, they’re not being enforced,” she said. Haimson, of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said her group is concerned about “the explosion of apps” used in schools, saying that “parents aren’t being informed about what data is being collected by private companies, how it is being used, and how it is being protected.” “There were a large number of very well-intentioned companies that offered educational tools at the beginning of the pandemic,” Siegl said. By last school year, the figure had increased to 1,449. The number of education tools and applications accessed per month by school districts increased from 952 just before the pandemic to 1,327 soon after, according to statistics from LearnPlatform Inc., a Raleigh, N.C.-based firm. Parents who had varying levels of engagement with their children’s education and the technology used by districts “suddenly had that technology right across the kitchen table from them,” Siegl said. Most district went home on a Friday and found out that come the next Monday, they had to be virtual.” “The pandemic was an accelerator of education technology,” he said. It’s the superintendent, the curriculum office, the professional development trainers. “It’s not just the technology department responsible. “There’s not just one thing that people should do to ensure data privacy,” said Keith Krueger, the chief executive officer of the Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN, which serves school district technology directors across the country. Student data privacy encompasses a broad range of considerations, from students’ own smartphones, to classroom applications discovered and embraced by teachers, to district-level data systems, to state testing programs. ‘It’s not just the technology department responsible. “The district can outsource the work, but it can’t outsource the responsibility,” said Siegl, who is a former technology strategist for the Fairfax County, Va., public schools, the largest district in the state. The school system was entrusting its information to one of the bigger data service providers in the K-12 marketplace, and that will inevitably offer some lessons in student privacy, he said. Jim Siegl, a senior technologist with the youth and education privacy team at Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said that the New York City district’s access to the Illuminate system was disrupted for almost three weeks. “The security of the data we have in our care is one of our highest priorities, and we have already taken important steps to help prevent this from happening again.” “There is no evidence of any fraudulent or illegal activity related to this incident,” the company said in an email to Education Week. Illuminate Education, in response to an email query, acknowledged that some personal information in the New York City system was subject to “unauthorized access.” Officials with the New York City Department of Education told local news outlets that Illuminate Education had failed to encrypt data on its classroom management, scheduling, and pupil data platforms as required by the contract between the company and the school system. The vendor did not collect students’ Social Security numbers or family income information, the reports noted. In the New York City breach, a hacker gained access to student names, birthdates, and data on such characteristics as special education, English-language learner, and free or reduced-price meal status on platforms operated by Illuminate Education, according to news reports. “The pandemic has given a lot of companies access to student data that has not been sufficiently protected.” A massive breach of student data in the Big Apple shows more work needs to be done “There are so many issues” with the protection of student data generally, said Leonie Haimson, the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. In late March of this year, it came to light that the personal data of 820,000 current and former students in the New York City school system were compromised because of a security breach at Illuminate Education, an Irvine, Calif.-based student data vendor.
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