Every day, colleges and universities gather vast amounts of personal data on their student information system. That is why a good management software must not only run correctly, but ensure data confidentiality and safety.
One of the top IT investments for higher education success is data-informed decision-making. To Educause, it means:
“Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting and analytics are relevant, convenient and used by administrators, faculty, and students.”
Their data must be both available and secure as well as open and private.
It may sound like a contradiction, but this is key to support students and integrate information from multiple applications and locations across a college campus.
That’s why privacy and security are the most pressing pain point for IT professionals in colleges, as they look for different solutions to prevent data exposure, productivity loss and financial risks.
According to a survey of Chief Information Officers in education, costs of software are escalating due to “the pace of growing sophistication and frequency of threats.”
When it comes to cloud computing embedded in higher education technology, for instance, CIOs are concerned about:
- Save money using cloud computing
- Security measures
- Access to data and information in the cloud
- Protection of sensitive data
- Privacy measures
What are the differences between privacy and security?
Big data academics Priyank Jain, Manasi Gyanchandani and Nilay Khare explain:
“Data privacy is focused on the use and governance of individual data –things like setting up policies in place to ensure that consumers’ personal information is being collected, shared and utilized in appropriate ways. Security concentrates more on protecting data from malicious attacks and the misuse of stolen data for profit.”
In summary, the scholars also underline:
- Data Privacy is the appropriate use of people’s information.
- Data Security implies the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data.
While it is possible to have poor privacy and good security practices, it’s difficult to have good privacy practices without a proper data security program.
Security and privacy with students’ data on college software
From the minute prospective students send their information and enroll in an institution, a thin line binds the release of their information for administration and assessment and disclosing personal information to third parties.
A private higher education software
If a student provides personal information to enroll into an undergraduate program, the university cannot sell or deliver the student’s information to a third party without prior consent.
This will depend on the private agreement between the student and the institution, plus the local, federal or national privacy regulations.
A secure higher education software
Any university’s internal and outsourced software architecture uses various techniques such as encryptions and firewalls to prevent that same personal data to be compromised in vulnerabilities across the network. This can come from a hacker, a data losing software malfunction or simply having the wrong people accessing that information because of a security breach.
Therefore, if you start looking for higher education software and campus solutions that makes the most of the information you gather every day, make sure they provide a proper balance, to prevent data loss and ensure that your information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
How secure and private are your current applications for your institutions management?