The Burden On Service Providers In Ed Tech

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Privacy is a major concern for anyone in the public sector, but there are particular issues around the storage of individual identifiable student data.

David Katz is a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough’s Atlanta office, where he works in privacy and information security. He said the biggest questions for storage service providers working in the education space is, ’Are they able to give assurances that the data that students are providing can later be destroyed -- is that something that they’ve built into their technology?’

Data scrubbing is hardly a new challenge, but it gets more complicated as storage technologies are enhanced and their applications broadened.

’These sort of concepts, while they may seem simple, when you start to get into areas of technology and can you really provide in a contract with assurance -- agreeing to be bound -- that you can later go back and really do that, it really presents some challenges,’ Katz said.

On top of that, clients often lack the knowledge and experience to understand ’how data is stored’ and ’maybe overwritten or not overwritten.’

According to Katz, clients in the education space may not even know enough to ask about data scrubbing and storage security.

’It may be that the burden is on the service provider to ensure that that exists long before it ever goes into the school,’ Katz said.

PUBLISHED JUNE 15, 2015