The world has taken on a renewed sense of ownership when it comes to mental health in recent years – and for good reason.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 6 kids aged 6-17 experience mental illness each year. Even worse, students of this same age group with mental, emotional, or behavioral concerns are three times more likely to repeat a grade.
In other words, mental health makes a difference in the lives of your students. It’s the responsibility of your district to take appropriate action and support students who may be going through mental or emotional distress – especially when distress signals show up in school-provided technology.
Here, we’ll take a look at the overlap between mental, physical, and cyber well-being and what your school district can do to mitigate safety risks before they get out of hand.
Cloud services like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, provide major benefits to educators around the country. When world events necessitated the leap to online learning, these cloud apps were there to cushion the landing.
But when school districts transitioned from traditional learning tools in favor of cloud applications – and the many convenient cost-savings they provide – many neglected to make an equal commitment to cloud security. Our research in collaboration with Edweek revealed that even though 90% of schools operate in the cloud, only 20% of cybersecurity budgets are being allocated to protecting cloud applications in 2022.
It’s a common misconception that network or endpoint security tools extend to the cloud. In reality, they only protect the data, tools, and services that exist within your network. Cloud applications, however, are external services provided by third-party vendors. That’s why cloud security is a must-have solution for every school district.
But how does cybersecurity relate to mental health and physical safety? In short, you only need to consider the many types of data that your school district is already storing in the cloud. These may include:
All of these data points are likely stored in your cloud environment, but almost none of them are protected by adequate cloud security. Now imagine if they fell into the wrong hands, whether it be a student, teacher, or outsider. The repercussions of that exposure could have far-reaching effects to both mental and physical well-being.
A digital incident refers to the accidental or malicious exposure of confidential information. In the case of your school district, that information could include any of the types outlined above.
Generally speaking, you can group digital incidents into two categories: data breaches and data leaks. Let’s take a closer look at how each one might occur.
A data breach is a malicious internal or external attack that exposes sensitive data outside the school district. The most common causes of such a breach include:
A data leak refers to the accidental release of sensitive data from your cloud environment. Data leaks are usually accidental and often happen in a few different ways:
Digital incidents can have a direct impact on the physical and emotional safety of the students whose data is involved in the event.
Although there’s almost no telling what could happen when student data falls into the hands of an unauthorized third party, you need only look at history to understand the dangers:
Fortunately, neither of these cases led to physical harm – but they easily could have. That’s what makes data loss prevention such an immense responsibility. Data breaches and leaks expose students to fraud, extortion, and identity theft, not to mention bullying and harassment from their peers.
On the flip side, there are many ways that physical and mental stressors can manifest themselves in the cloud. Whether it be bullying, family, or academic performance, any number of factors could have a serious effect on a student’s mental well-being and physical safety.
Believe it not, cloud services are often hosting unseen digital expressions that might indicate signs of risky behaviors. For example, a student might journal their experiences in a school-provided cloud application, or they might talk about their troubles with a classmate over chat. In either example, these digital expressions may indicate signs of the following:
Without the ability to spot these risks as they occur, it’s impossible to get ahead of the curve and prevent a bad situation from getting worse.
The good news is that there’s a way to uncover these unseen risks and prevent digital incidents from occurring in the first place: a cloud-based monitoring solution.
By leveraging a cloud data loss prevention (DLP) tool to your advantage, you can effectively keep tabs on your cloud environment. In turn, you can identify data security risks, address mental health concerns, and prevent the physical repercussions of such incidents.
Here’s how cloud monitoring works:
Altogether, a cloud monitoring solution is a must-have tool for ensuring the mental, physical, and cyber well-being of your school district’s student population. With cloud DLP on your side, you can prevent the exposure of sensitive student data that may lead to physical and mental distress. Even more importantly, you can identify signs of that distress when they’re detected in your cloud environment.
At ManagedMethods, our cloud-based security platform is designed for ease-of-use with out-of-the-box functionality so that you can focus on ensuring the well-being of your students. To help you realize the full power of cloud monitoring, you can trial the platform free for 30 days.