School Loop is very aware of the importance of keeping access and information secure. Realistically, K-12 software systems are not under the sort of ongoing attack as financial institutions; our primary security vulnerability is password protection by users. So in addition to prevention, we focus on detection and recovery.
Prevention
School Loop employs a wide variety of measures to prevent security breaches. Fundamentally, since School Loop is a custom JAVA application written on the Mac platform, it is not vulnerable to typical off-the-shelf problems. To register, users need access to personal information, and parents cannot see grades or attendance until they are approved by a staff member. Individual members can challenge new members, so the system protects itself. School Loop users can login securely using HTTPS.
Beyond technology, because students publish in the real names, and cannot change their names, mischief is kept at a minimum and is easily trackable via our log system (see detection).
Detection
School Loop logs a many data transactions, and makes logs available to administrators. In case of an issue, a review of those logs often results a conclusive resolution. In addition, School Loop employs a set of algorithms that look for unusual patterns in the gradebook, alerting us to potential problems.
School Loop is very aware of the importance of keeping access and
information secure. Realistically, K-12 software systems are not under
the sort of ongoing attack as financial institutions; our primary
security vulnerability is password protection by users. So in addition
to prevention, we focus on detection and recovery.
Recovery.
As more
grading moves onto computers and online, K-12 districts find themselves
dealing with more cases of grade tampering. Desktop systems are
vulnerable as users generally do not follow rigorous back-up routines,
and can't easily compare files even if they do. Online systems have
better backups, but School Loop records gradebook constantly, and allow
teachers to move back and forth in time, making it easy to revert in
case of trouble. In addition, teacher can research the history of an
assignment or of a student with ease.
No system is foolproof, and we evaluate our security practices on an ongoing basis.
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