K-12 Data Management and Disaster Recovery: 3 Things Your District Can Do Now
Being prepared for man-made and natural disasters ensures quick recovery and operational continuity for school districts. Data protection, reliable connectivity, and compliant record-keeping are essential to districts. There are a few basic things your school can do to prepare for technology challenges and provide uninterrupted technology services to your students and teachers.
Here’s a quick overview of 3 steps your K-12 school can take to update your technology for a reliable educational experience.
1) Implement Robust Backup and Recovery
Does your school have a reliable backup and recovery strategy in place?
The ideal backup and recovery plan follows the 3-2-1 rule. Schools should store 3 copies of student data on 2 different types of devices, with one copy stored at an off-site location.
Keeping several copies of important records in different places can protect you from risks, such as ransomware attacks, which sometimes delete on-site backups. You can easily foil a ransomware attack by storing your records in separate locations so information can be protected from the bad guys and recovered quickly without paying a ransom you can’t afford for a decryption key.
The public cloud or a colocation are great places to store backups of student records. If records are lost and systems get shut down, you can quickly recover them from a secondary data center or instantly failover into the cloud.
2) Develop a Disaster Recovery Strategy
Your school can be empowered to get through a natural disaster or equipment failure when you have a disaster recovery strategy in place. Your disaster recovery plan should be tested regularly to ensure that it works reliably.
The cloud or a colocation in an area far from where your school is located provides a great place to store student information. Your colocation should be in an area far enough away from your school building not to be affected by a big storm or fire.
The hybrid cloud provides a perfect environment for disaster recovery because public cloud resources can be used to back up and recover information after a disaster so learning can continue as soon as possible. The cloud can also be a more affordable alternative to creating a secondary physical data center for disaster recovery.
3) Create a Regulatory Environment
Your school can make the most of its technology and the flexibility it provides by following technology regulations. Regulations govern both the accessibility of learning technology and the privacy of student information.
All students should have equal access to internet connectivity so they can participate in online learning. The E-Rate program helps schools like yours access Wi-Fi at an affordable, discounted rate so students can enjoy uninterrupted connectivity. Your school’s technology should also be protected by security tools that prevent unauthorized access to records.
Working with a technology partner that has experience working with K-12 schools will ensure that your IT environment meets compliance regulations for student connectivity, data access, and security.
Empowering Your School With Technology
By being prepared for the unexpected, you can equip your school to provide an uninterrupted educational experience for students. Taking steps to prepare isn’t difficult when you work with the right technology partner.
Ednetics has extensive experience working with K-12 schools to deliver reliable educational technology using backup and recovery, security, and connectivity. As a Cisco Partner, Ednetics can provide top security solutions for schools to protect student information and ensure seamless accessibility to online learning.
We believe in helping schools stay safer and better equipped for the demands of the modern classroom. Our mission is to provide high-value technology solutions that reduce the digital divide, making sure all students have an equal chance to succeed.