How is our district storing and protecting data? What recommendations and questions would you make?
Our district does a pretty solid job of protecting our security. (Well, that is what I think now, but give me a few moments to ponder this and change my mind)! At my school, we have two staff members whose sole purpose is technology. One person works on security and preserving our data. The other person works on maintaining the website and communication with the parents, teachers, and students. We each have our own website to update weekly under the supervision of the technology director. We attend technology safety trainings twice a year. The teachers, students, and parents have user names and passwords. The user names are changed yearly, and the passwords are changed monthly. Now, changing a password every month can get annoying, but it helps protect us. Luckily, we also have all information stored on one main G drive on our server, plus we all use jump drives as a back up. Further, each year, teachers store all their files to the main server and a CD. We keep all our documents, files, photos, video, etc. in a "digital library". This thing is kept under tight security- we are talking Fort Knox people! The teachers can't even get in without one of the technology directors! I also really like that our personal information, and the students personal information and grades are all stored on a specific program. We are virtually a paperless school. This makes it easier on teachers and students, plus we are "GOING GREEN"! We still keep hard copies of all major documents locked in the office in file cabinets to be extra cautious in case anything ever happened.
Some questions I do have for our district involve our social security codes. I do not like signing in each day on my computer with my login as my social security, plus the computer remembers it as well. I would recommend that changes. Also, our websites can be seen for all. Can we move to a protected website where a user name and password is required for access? This is a huge safety issue, especially having photos of the students and links to email addresses. Lastly, what future trainings are in place to teach teachers and families about Internet safety and viruses? Being that our website and email addresses are open for anyone, several times a teacher has opened an email thinking it was from a parent and a virus exploded. It took three days to correct the problem. Our school was without the use of computers and it was a scary time wondering what was destroyed or accessed. I would like to see not only constant training, but also stricter safety precautions with sharing our personal information. After all, our job is to keep the students safe. I understand having a website that is accessible for all to see helps bring in potential families to our school. It is a private school, so I understand the "business" side. However, safety comes first. Thoughts for the day from me!
No comments:
Post a Comment