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Innovative Architecture Addresses Student Digital Privacy Act Challenges – Press Release by RNS & NLET

Trust Networks support education systems’ compliance with new Federal and State legislation on data privacy

(via Yahoo! Finance)

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Resilient Network Systems, Inc., a leading provider of advanced access control and privacy solutions, and the National Laboratory for Education Transformation (NLET), a Silicon Valley non-profit dedicated to modern solutions for education, are collaborating to deliver new technologies and services that meet Federal and State legislation to protect the privacy of students’ information online and to facilitate secure access between education institutions and the vendor community.

The White House’s proposed Student Digital Privacy Act and California’s Student Online Personal Information Protection Act of 2014 challenge industry to apply innovation for the protection of students’ online information at schools and organizations across the education spectrum.  “And since we’re pioneers in both these areas [Internet and rights of citizens], I’m confident that we can be pioneers in crafting the kind of architecture that will allow us to both grow, innovate, and preserve those values that are so precious to us as Americans,” said President Obama.

To foster the well-being and education of children, Resilient Network Systems and NLET are driving to create a Trust Network to Support Children that will enable children, educators, parents, and caregivers across public and private organizations to collaborate and share sensitive information with confidence across the Web.  This Trust Network will advance the availability and effectiveness of online learning by providing personalized yet privacy-protecting rights management, so children can conveniently, and anonymously, access online content or services from multiple sources via any of their devices.  To learn more about this project please visit www.resilient-networks.com/solutions/education, which details Trust Networks for education and includes a whitepaper to download.

“I applaud the White House’s commitment and those of states, like California, for their efforts to protect the privacy of students’ online identities and data.  The use of online resources can be of tremendous benefit to students, yet appropriate means to protect the data are imperative, not just to meet regulatory requirements, but to ensure proper protections for children.  A Trust Network architecture can enable many of the recommendations and requirements from recent and proposed legislation,” stated Richard Spires, CEO of Resilient Network Systems and former CIO at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Resilient Network Systems and NLET were previously awarded a grant by the Department of Commerce as part of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, released by the White House in 2011.  The grant enabled the first Trust Network for Education pilot under the NSTIC Pilot program, operating from 2012-2014.  Over ten education organizations and technology vendors combined their expertise and technologies to develop and implement these solutions, which served two California school districts.  With the success of the pilot, Resilient Network Systems and NLET have agreed to continue bringing their innovative solutions to this complex area of bridging privacy and performance.

At-risk children often require combined support from educational, social, health and even criminal justice organizations.  “Unfortunately, there are both technology and privacy barriers to sharing the appropriate data about these children with the adults who are providing these services.  These supporters and the children themselves are forced to wait for information requests to be processed manually, to ask and answer the same questions again and again, and to operate with incomplete understanding about what is happening in these children’s lives,” said NLET President Gordon Freedman, who had a twenty year career in the education technology sector before founding NLET.

Resilient Network Systems and NLET are committed to reducing barriers that limit children’s access to online learning tools; reduce existing services’ effectiveness by preventing optimal personalization based upon each child’s personal and historic information.  These barriers practically outlaw services that could analyze children’s data across systems to identify and solve education challenges ranging from individuals to populations.  Traditional approaches to access control and privacy can cause online services to widen the educational systems’ exposure to hackers and increase the probability of breaches, both in those systems and in other systems the children access.  New approaches, such as Trust Networks, are necessary to realize the value of online access to children’s information in service to them, their parents and the organizations that support them, while also preserving their privacy and safety.

About Resilient Network Systems, Inc.

Resilient Network Systems has built and launched the Trust Network software, to address the pressing need for secure and privacy-protecting access across the Internet.  A Trust Network virtualizes real-world relationships and conditions of trust by confirming identities within the network, and enforcing each participant’s access policies while divulging the minimum required personal information.  Both sides of any type of access, data sharing or transaction event develop higher levels of trust through improved authentication of each party and adherence to each other’s policy requirements.  www.resilient-networks.com

About National Laboratory for Education Transformation

On the cutting edge of knowledge technology and education, the National Laboratory of Educational Transformation (NLET) serves as the liaison between technology and education communities.  NLET is a non- profit organization founded to apply scientific expertise, new methods, and better tools to improve the structure of education and the culture of learning in the United States.  NLET’s goals are (a) to foster individual learning, (b) to promote greater education system efficiency and (c) to improve access to knowledge for both learners and educators.  Privacy for learners is therefore critical to NLET’s mission.  www.NLET.org