April 2007 — News

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Data Security in K-12 School Districts

by Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy are popular with free versions available. David Nagel (2007) reported that Sendio launched an e-mail security product for education called I.C.E. Box (Intercept, Confirm, or Eliminate). Sendio indicates that this is the only anti-spam product on the market that relies on verifying a sender's address as a means to block unwanted emails. It also rejects viruses before they enter your network. Rather than worrying about compatibility among stand-alone products, districts might prefer all-in-one suites from McAfee or Semantic, which are listed among the top-10 in 2006 by PC Magazine.

Identity-driven infrastructures. Waters (2007) indicated that district solutions are moving toward identity-driven infrastructures to manage endpoints and control network access using products from Novell and Nevis Networks, for example.  Novell's Identity Manager helps to automatically assign system resources and access privileges to users and to manage passwords. The company's Storage Manager uses identities to help assign appropriate storage on the network. It also protects schools against liability by letting you control the type of content that can be stored by individuals or groups on the network, and where and when users can store it. Nevis Networks' LANenforcer controls access to the network based on user IDs. The LANenforcer Security Appliance also identifies and eliminates a range of threats such as worms, spyware, adware, bots, Trojans, and disk operating system attacks.

Physical-level protection. At the physical level, what happens to data when student and staff laptops and classroom and administrative computers are stolen from schools? There are product solutions for that, too. For example, Cyber Angel Security Solutions states that their software not only helps recover the stolen hardware, but also prevents access to data stored on those computers with its "on the fly encryption while in the hands of an unauthorized user" and remote access to data stored on the school's network because of its password entry system.

AUP policies. School districts also implement acceptable use policies. Those documents should contain enforceable consequences for infringements including disciplinary actions (e.g., detention, suspension, and expulsion), removing computer privileges, and possible legal actions that begin with notifying police when laws are broken (e.g., hacking into computers to delete or alter student records). The