Data Privacy Week 2023: A Guide to Internet Safety for Students
Celebrate and Educate this Data Privacy Week
Here at Senso we are passionate about keeping your data safe online. So this Data Privacy Week, we want to make sure you are fully educated on your privacy rights to ensure internet safety for students and staff at your institution.
A Brief History of National Data Privacy Week
The National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) set up the first Data Privacy Week in 2008 to mark the January 28th 1981 signing of Convention 108. This international treaty was the first international effort to protect data and privacy.
As time passed, data privacy became a more complex issue, in response the convention has modernized to meet the unique challenges of new information and communication technologies. To ensure online privacy remains a protected right, changes have been made, but the core principles of technology neutral implementation has remained central to the mission of data privacy advocates.
A Brief History of National Data Privacy Week
Pew Research data finds that 79% of adults in the US feel some level of concern or frustration about data privacy. If this is you, it is important to gain understanding into the ways personal data is put at risk in everyday life and how you can protect your privacy.
Personal data is often stored in institutional databases which are usually used for safeguarding purposes, especially in relation to schools. Where possible, trustworthy institutions store minimal identifying data such as names, addresses, birth dates, social security numbers, and necessary financial or medical records.
Sharing this information with non-trusted sources or through third-party data hosting sites can put your data at risk of falling into the wrong hands. Identifying untrustworthy websites and phishing messages can be difficult. This is why an awareness of what a normal message from, for example, your bank looks like is important. To go the extra step, you can also install spam filters and safeguarding software to block harmful websites and links.
As an individual or institution, you should consider how you value convenience and security as a necessary trade-off when using the web. When websites ask you to accept Cookies, this mean the site wants to collect your user activity data. This can include location, age and gender demographics, and previous searches or web visits.
Often sites that use cookies are not going to sell your data to harmful entities, but once collected there is no guarantee your information will be secure. Personalised adverts and autocomplete queries on Google that you see every day, use the stored data from your collected Cookies to increase the convenience of online activity. Privacy and safeguarding software packages for schools can automatically block unnecessary data collection to ensure that children’s data is protected to the highest standards.
3 Top Tips to Encourage a Respect for Data Privacy
1- Keep Personal Information Private
Educate your students and staff about the risks of sharing their information online. Dangerous websites and spam emails are modernising to escape detection, so the best option is to not give out important information apart from under very specific circumstances.
2- Perfect your Passwords
According to the NCA, passwords should be at least 12 characters, and fully unique for each account. We all know how difficult it is to remember our passwords, so this recommendation may seem a daunting idea; however, using a reliable password manager can make this simple!
3- Don’t delay your software updates
Malware and phishing attacks are always changing and modernising, so updates to your security system are essential to meet these challenges head on. Centralised network management software can make this task simple for administrators in charge of networked device management to manage updates and solve software problems as they arise.
What is Senso doing to Promote Data Privacy?
All Senso software is fully COPPA, FERPA, SOPPA and CIPA compliant. This means that we provide a standard of protection which is essential to keep children and young people safe online, which includes protecting their data.
Our software packages for schools give you the ability to easily protect privacy and provide fully comprehensive internet safety for students. Most relevant to data privacy is our Safeguard Cloud device monitoring software. Our easy-to-use safeguarding display works with a high-level cloud based web filter and keyword database monitoring system to limit students’ access to harmful web content.
If you have any questions about how to transform your data privacy software with Senso, or queries about any of our other services, please don’t hesitate to call our reliable experts on 866-664-1520. Or simply Book a demo.