Next week, we will be joined by Reginald Gossett and Justin Feltus for a live webinar discussing how they use ManagedMethods to help them manage cybersecurity, safety, and compliance in Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for Education.
Many people don’t realize that both Google and Microsoft 365 are cloud-based SaaS applications. Yes, they work in basically the same way that other applications more commonly considered SaaS apps work.
This means that both need to be secured and monitored for cybersecurity and student safety purposes. For school districts, not only is this about protecting finances, identities/personally identifiable information, and students’ health and wellness. There are also compliance implications to using any kind of technology and/or data for district business and classroom learning purposes.
While basically every school district now uses firewalls, content filters, and network/perimeter-based security and control technology, very few are properly securing cloud-based data and systems—like Google and Microsoft. That is because few IT leaders in K-12 realize that network/perimeter-based security is not particularly effective against data loss, data leaks, and data breaches in the cloud.
That is just one of the reasons why Justin and Reginald have agreed to volunteer their valuable time to help their fellow K-12 IT professionals understand how you can better manage cybersecurity, safety, and compliance in your district.
Here is a preview of some of the specific topics we’ll be covering during the webinar, courtesy of Reginald Gossett, Executive Director of Technology at Troup ISD in Texas.
RG: It has increased my monitoring of third-party apps tremendously! Thanks to ManagedMethods I can go into the console to see what third-party apps have been installed and granted permissions. Based on the app, I can choose to remove it or allow it. Most third-party apps do not let you know about the data that is being captured from your users which makes it more complicated to try to distinguish from the ones to remove or allow.
RG: It is a challenge to make sure that the user who is using an account, whether Google or Microsoft 365, is the actual user. Using ManagedMethods, we can tell where the user is trying to log into or where they are trying to access their account from. For my district, most countries that are not in the USA is going to be someone that is trying to hack into the user account.
Also, it was difficult to suspend an account exhibiting these types of suspicious activities using Google and Microsoft native admin tools without finding out after the fact. Now, ManagedMethods makes it easy to setup a policy and, anytime the policy is enacted, it will automatically suspend the account.
RG: ManagedMethods has helped tremendously by automating these processes. Before, we were spending a lot of time manually dealing with issues after the fact. Now, we are able to remove VPN, apps, etc. right away without having to wait to hear from a user.
We also have automated Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Social Security Numbers (SSN), and credit card notifications setup, so we know if a user has sent something out with this information and can make them aware of the ramifications of this information being stolen.
We’re looking forward to sharing these benefits and many more with you during our upcoming live webinar: K-12 Cybersecurity, Safety & Compliance in Google Workspace & Microsoft 365.
Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how ManagedMethods is helping district IT teams across North America manage cybersecurity, student safety, and regulatory compliance in Google and Microsoft…and generally help make their lives a little easier. You’ll also be among the first to see some exciting new features and UI updates!