The shifting sands of digital safeguarding
The definition of safeguarding has come a long way- from its origins dealing with personal and family circumstances, it has grown to encompass more in the digital space.
Web filtering and safeguarding alerts are the standard in schools now. These are very important for catching signs of personal problems that could rapidly grow out of hand.
The current standard forms of safeguarding focus on the students themselves. However, the scope for safeguarding is constantly expanding with education largely moving online in the last few years, ed-tech is storing an increasingly large amount of student information.
Schools need to be aware of what information these ed-tech companies are storing and should take steps to go above and beyond just being compliant.
Understanding the landscape of student data
There are various types of student data:
- Academic: Exam scores, feedback
- Behavioural: Any behaviour issues in lessons
- Biometric: Pictures, fingerprints
- Demographic
- Interaction data from apps
As seen from above, there is a lot that gets stored!
The issue
Data breaches are common, with no company being safe. Even the European Commission got breached in March 2026.
The answer to this issue is simple: only provide the absolute bare minimum amount of information to companies. Any information that isn’t required for their service to function should not be stored. If a company persists with mandating such information, we recommend pushing back or simply using another service that does not require it.
How can we help?
We supply FortiGate firewalls, which have next-gen capabilities such as AI-driven threat intelligence and application control.
Coconnect are also partnered with Secure Schools, helping schools achieve a good cyber security posture. This can help identify suppliers with responsible data protection practices. However, as mentioned before, the most effective protection against a data breach is not supplying the data in the first place.
We are happy to chat if you have any questions.
