Advanced cybersecurity for schools with Phidias educational software

With the rise in cyberattacks recorded in the education sector over the past year, cybersecurity has become a central issue in the academic management of schools, drawing attention to the educational software that manages institutions' data.

According to the “2022 Security Report” by Check Point Software Technologies, the education sector was the main target of cybercrime in 2021, with an average of almost 1,605 attacks per organization every week. That represents a 75% increase compared with 2020.

Aware of how serious the current situation is, we at Phidias want to devote a special post to summarizing the security mechanisms built into our platform, so you can protect your school's data and avoid any kind of vulnerabilities.

What does the advanced cybersecurity of Phidias educational software involve?

• Roles and access

The first security element built into our educational software is what we call “roles and access.” This means that every user in the system has an assigned role, which carries specific permissions that grant access only to the information that user needs or that the institution considers appropriate. For example, nursing staff may only be allowed to view students' medical records.

But what happens if a parent is also a staff member at the school? For those cases, Phidias allows the same user to have several roles, each with its own configured permissions. This ensures that users see only the data that is strictly necessary in each role.

To illustrate, suppose a parent is also a teacher at the institution. With a single user account, they can log in as a teacher to record their students' grades, and check their own child's grades just as any other parent at the school would see them.

• Activity log

Second, the activity log is a feature that records every click each user makes on the platform (including date and time). This makes it possible to reconstruct every action a given user carried out if a situation ever calls for a more detailed investigation.

• Backups

Because we know that data backups are everything today, our educational software automatically creates backups every 24 hours. In addition, the system allows backups to be run before carrying out sensitive operations.

• Automatic logout

As the name suggests, this mechanism automatically logs a user out after a certain number of minutes of inactivity, in order to prevent a possible vulnerability.

• Secure password storage

This is undoubtedly a crucial aspect of cybersecurity today. Our academic management system is designed to store all passwords in encrypted form (hashing), so that not even developers can see them.

• Access via HTTPS

Last but not least, the HTTPS protocol (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) used by our educational software encrypts all information traveling within the system, making it hard to breach.

It is worth noting that, unlike other systems, Phidias applies this protocol across its entire platform, rather than only on the registration or login page.

Additional security tools

In addition to the mechanisms above, our academic management software for schools includes additional tools that strengthen cybersecurity by encouraging sound information-handling practices. These are:

• Two-step authentication

Two-step authentication helps strengthen protection against user-level vulnerabilities by generating a token without which the person cannot log in to the system.

• Lockout after failed attempts

Phidias is also configured so that if someone makes 3 failed login attempts, the system automatically sends a notification warning the user that the account will be permanently locked if the next attempt fails.

That way, if someone is trying to break into the system through a given user account, access is blocked automatically after that number of failed attempts.

• Phidias employee access log

The school also has access to a log showing which Phidias staff members (consultants, coordinators or directors) have accessed the platform, including the time, date and reason for the access. This employee access log adds four layers of security by:

• Requiring a Phidias email address to log in to the platform (e.g. user@phidias.com.co)
• Allowing access only if the user is authorized in the database
• Asking for the reason why access to the database is needed
• Being able to track exactly what the consultant did on the platform and when (thanks to the activity log mentioned above)

• Password management options

Finally, our educational software includes mechanisms that let the school set the difficulty level of passwords (weak, medium or strong) and their length (6, 8, 12 or 16 characters), and prevent users from reusing previously registered passwords, all in line with the global guidelines that define password security levels.

Thanks to these and other features, our educational software is regarded as one of the systems with the highest cybersecurity standards on the market. Send us a message and find out how we can help you protect your school's data!