Monthly Archives: September 2020

The Challenge of Protecting Student Data

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One of the many challenges that has been highlighted in great detail by the pandemic is the gaps we have in our education system – from inequitable access to WiFi and laptops to protecting student data when students are working from a variety of different locations outside of the school building. Protecting student data is a top priority for Lumen™ Touch.

At the end of the day, I want to assure you that we adhere strictly to the student privacy pledge and reinforce to you that no one gets access to your data. We think it is very important to understand that we go far and beyond to ensure that the integrity of your system and data remain intact at all times.

Dr. John Vandewalle, CEO

How Lumen Touch Protects Student Data

Since last spring, when schools closed and students moved to online learning, there has been a rapid increase in demand for technology. We saw everything from Zoom bombs to phishing attacks that played on the emotions of people terrified about COVID-19. Ransomware continues to increase in both volume and complexity, but Lumen Touch is committed to staying a step ahead wherever possible. This is why we:

  • Follow industry best practices for the services provided
  • Maintain updates and configurations of all services
  • Isolate risk and standardization when determining the design and configurations of our services
  • Work under the assumption that all networks are potentially hostile (This includes other servers in the local network and clients across the web)
  • Explicitly banned the use of defaulted trust between services
  • Enforce access rules and firewalls among all systems

Lumen Touch Is More than an EdTech Platform; We Are Your Managed IT Partner

In addition to providing comprehensive solutions for delivering education, health, and safety for all of your students, Lumen Touch remains busy in the background, too.

24/7 Monitoring: We monitor your site remotely 24/7/365, providing sophisticated threat detection to block potential threats. We also use a variety of tools to help prevent malware and ransomware threats from breaching your system, including a tool, Fail2Ban, that monitors for malicious login attempts.

Nightly Remote Backups: We perform nightly backups of your data, using AES 256 encryption. In addition to a master Lumen Touch encryption key, each backup also has an individual client key. The backups are stored securely in the US outside of your region – this protects your data in the case of localized weather catastrophes that affect local data centers.

Restoration and Recovery: No matter how much technology we employ, human error accounts for a great number of threats to network security. It only takes one employee clicking on a link or downloading a file that contains a virus or malware for a threat to permeate your IT infrastructure. Our disaster recovery service ensures that if the worst happens, you’ll be up and running again within 1-4 hours, restored from the previous night’s backup and with minimal downtime.

Technology will continue to be an important part of education as we move forward. Because of that, student data security must be a top priority for schools and the edtech providers with whom they partner.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help you protect your student data while empowering students, teachers, and administrators with powerful edtech, get in touch.

It’s Time to Join SpaceX and Aim for the Moon

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Our existing education system is like the rocket ship of the past that got us into orbit. That was the engine that built the economy of our very successful country.

But isn’t it past time that we build a new engine to get us to the education moon?

It took a company like SpaceX to use design thinking to reorient the US space program and bring the prowess of space adventure back to the US. They found a new design and new technology to give them the thrust and a competitive advantage.

So, have you found a new design or new technology embedded in bold leadership to embrace the passion for education redesign? This pandemic that we are in is the defining moment that is separating redesign from re-engineering. If you are caught in the crisis, it may be a good time to re-evaluate your redesign program. If you are meeting the challenge of the pandemic with some ease, then your design thinking and planning is kicking in.

How to “SpaceX” Your Education System

Let’s address the whole arena of technology and its role in managing the crisis and in leading redesign. Most technology in schools is 5-30 years old – oops! It may be important for us to define technology, so we don’t create a cohort of defensive readers.

Technology is defined as science or knowledge put into practical use to solve problems or invent useful tools.

When we mention the word technology, it is most often equated with Chromebooks, laptops, and 1:1 and curriculum software. We do not speak of it in its true context and hence will not be able to exploit it to drive the value of the brave new world, the Age of Agility, and learning tuned to the individuals’ learning abilities.

Had schools taken advantage of the existing updates in technology that are already on the market, we would now have virtual classrooms and virtual technology in every school and home, we would have been able to integrate at-home learning smoothly, and we would not be talking about inequity and inequality to the extent we are. If we had built a learning system in our community from the ground up with design thinking, then it would look unlike most schools we see today; so how do we go from here to there amid a crisis and beyond?

The Crisis-Driven Learning Revolution

The amount of money being spent on edtech technology since 2016 has skyrocketed, with a market cap for technology companies sitting at an all-time high in excess of $250 billion. Schools that embrace the integrated learning evolution discover that they can drive sustained success; high connectivity leads to high performance and streamlined learning can empower creativity. Collaboration beyond the classroom is part of the secret sauce.  Let’s rediscover what it is that we need and explore the education landscape.

If you’re interested in learning how Lumen Touch can help you and your district be ready for the present and the future of learning, please get in touch. We’re eager to show you how we can help you save time and money while improving student learning beyond the realms of our current thinking.