Five Ways to Prevent Unintended Data Leaks

Did you know that schools are one of the largest targets for identity thieves?  It often takes the form of them posing as a school official in an effort to collect money from the school, ransomware attacks or harvesting student data.  When they harvest student data it may be years before the full impact is realized.  

As educators, we want to be sure we are doing our best to maintain the integrity of the data in our care.  Here are five easy ways to prevent unintentional data leaks and maintain the security of student data.

1.  Never Leave Your Computer Unsecured.  

If you walk away from your computer, be sure you lock it.  This will only take you a couple of seconds as you move away from your machine.  Hold down the Windows key +L or Control+Command+Q on a Mac and it will lock your screen.  With the advent of so many SSO options for student information systems, it only takes a few seconds for bad actors to gain access to valuable information on an unsecured computer.  

2.  Purge Your Downloads Folder

How often do you download reports that contain sensitive student information?  If that file contains more than three identifiable pieces of information for a student you want to limit who has access and the potential for it falling into the wrong hands.  If it is still on you computer sitting in your downloads folder, it is an easy target for anyone that might gain access to your computer.  If you need to keep it, move it to a better location and if you don't need to keep it, get rid of it.  

3.  Take Out The Trash

You deleted the file, so your safe now.  Wrong, it is still sitting in your trash folder.  It doesn't automatically go away, unlike the settings in your email that may permanently remove items in your trash  after thirty days, the same doesn't apply to your desktop.  You need to manually empty the trash, just like at home.  You can set it so it deletes the file instead of moving it to the trash, but many people like the added security of keeping it for a little while in case of an accidental delete, but don't leave them in there forever.  

4.  Use Pass Phrases

Many of us are guilty of using the same password for everything.  While convenient, it leaves us open to data breaches and bad actors attempting to force themselves into our accounts.  We have been told to use different passwords for every account and to use more complex passwords.  This can be challenging with the volume of accounts many of us have.  Password keepers can help with this and if you want to create passwords that are more complex but not just a random string of characters you can use pass phrases instead.  This can be a sentence or phrase that is memorable for you, but harder to break during a brute force attack.  

5.  Need To Know Only

Only share records with those that have a vested interest in the information.  If you need to share records electronically use shared folders.  Instead opt to share the file with the individual person that needs access to it and if available, set the access to expire after a limited period of time.  Shared folders can be great for documents and files that don't contain student data, but if the folder is shared with a group and not with individuals it can leave you open to attack.  If someone gains access and is able to create an account or add themselves to the group they now have access to all of those group files.  Instead it is better to share files with student information on an individual basis so you can control who sees that data.

These may seem simplistic, but sometimes the simplest methods can be the most effective.  

Thank you for reading The Cluttered Desk.   Please feel free to comment on the post and share your ideas with me.   If you found any value in this post, please share it with others.