Q&A: Amelia Vance’s Data Privacy Advice for K–12 Leaders? Focus on Human Error
Author: eli.zimmerman_9856
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Fri, 10/18/2019 – 15:01
Daily news headlines chronicle the constant threat of data breaches targeting the nation’s K–12 schools. More than 670 schools have been targets of cyberattacks since 2016, according to the K–12 Cybersecurity Resource Center. One reason for the frequency of those attacks, data privacy pro Amelia Vance says, is they’re easy targets.
In response to schools’ data privacy woes, legislators in over 40 states have passed more than 120 student privacy laws since 2013. But, Vance says, “it’s all about the humans.”
“You can pass all the laws you want, but this is all about how you implement laws.”
Vance is the director of education privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum, a key resource for school officials on data privacy laws and best practices.
She talked with EdTech: Focus on K–12 Managing Editor Marquita Brown about data privacy in schools, what school IT directors and administrators need to know about it, and how some school districts are successfully responding to or preventing cyberthreats.
EDTECH: What is one key thing educators should know about data security and what they should do to protect student information?
VANCE: I can’t emphasize data minimization enough, and there are a few aspects to that. You don’t have security breaches of data you don’t have.
One key step you can take at the beginning of any data collection project is simply to ask, “Do I need to collect that?” With a lot of apps, you can just sign up with a name and an email. They don’t need to know your favorite color, or what your ZIP code is. It’s very important to keep that in mind as schools continue to look at cybersecurity.
Because data storage is cheap and you don’t run out of space the way you used to run out of space in the filing cabinet, people just haven’t gone through a spring cleaning process. Thinking about that and how you build that in can be really critical in making sure that that data is never breached.
