Are You Keeping Up With Education Law 2-d Compliance?

What’s your plan for maintaining Education Law 2-d compliance? If you’re looking for expert assistance in managing your compliance processes, NST is here to help.

Complying with any form of regulation can be difficult, but it’s especially important for school districts to stay up to date with Education Law 2-d. This compliance system has undergone some updates recently — are you sure you’re still compliant?

What Is NYS Education Law 2-d?

First enacted in 2014, Education Law 2-d was developed to protect the personally identifiable information (PII) of students and education professionals. The intention was to better protect this data as it was collected, accessed, and stored in centralized school board databases, which were becoming targets for more and more sophisticated cyber-attacks.

In 2019, new additions to Education Law 2-d were proposed, including the adoption of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Version 1.1 (CSF or Framework). Furthermore, school districts will be required to appoint at least one “protection officer”, similar to roles in HIPAA compliance.

Are you sure you’re compliant with Education Law 2-d? Even if you were in 2014, have you kept up with the more recent developments?

4 Tips For Managing Your Education Law Compliance

These tips will both help to give you a clearer idea of where your organization currently stands, and help you better understand your obstacles as you prepare to make the changes needed to reach compliance.

Delegate The Important Roles: Someone on your staff, or your IT support provider, should be taking on the role of Privacy and Security Officer for your organization. While not specifically asked for, you’ll also need to have members of your team handling compliance documentation. Individuals with good organizational and writing skills are needed in this position, given that documenting your actions is a huge part of education law compliance. A designated Security Officer and clear documentation are required to meet the Administrative Safeguards. This isn’t the sort of thing you can just hope to have taken care of; take action and give the responsibility to someone you can trust.
Gather Necessary Information Through Assessment: You can’t make any of the truly necessary changes to your current education law compliance if you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Whomever you delegate the compliance officer role to needs to start by gathering crucial information about the state of your compliance. This is one way in which IT companies can be so helpful. Many IT companies that specialize in education law compliance and offer assessment and audit services that double-check an organization’s compliance against widely accepted best practices. Your assessment, whether handled independently or not, needs to cover both macro and micro levels to make sure your PII is secure. This is a mandatory aspect of any education organization’s compliance endeavors. Not only is it compulsory, but it’s the foundation for implementing safeguards to better protect your organization.
Roll Out Best organizations: Once you have determined where your compliance may be lacking, it’s time to address any such areas. The best way to do so is to consult with an IT company and apply their expertise to the task. Your IT company should be capable of recommending and implementing policies and procedures. These will provide your staff, and anyone who handles your sensitive information, a blueprint explaining the do’s and don’ts when it comes to education law compliance.
Train Your Employees: With the right organizations and policies in place, the last part of your cybersecurity defense that needs attention is you and your employees. The best cybersecurity technology and organizations in the world can be undone by one staff member who doesn’t understand how to use them, or how to protect the data they work with. A comprehensive compliance and cybersecurity training program (delivered by one of your local IT companies) will teach your staff how to handle a range of potential situations:
- How to participate in compliance best organizations
- How to identify and address suspicious emails, phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and more.
- How to use business technology without exposing patient data and other assets to external threats by accident.
- How to respond when you suspect that your organization is noncompliant.

Now you know where to begin — want help getting your education law compliance off the ground? Try NST.

NST Will Help You Manage Education Law 2-d Compliance

Compliance Assessment & Strategy: Our compliance services begin with a comprehensive assessment of your IT systems, the findings of which are compared with compliance cybersecurity controls. Our team will then develop a strategy to mitigate any risks of noncompliance, providing detailed documentation that you can demonstrate your commitment to compliance.
Remediation: Once the assessment is complete and the strategy has been developed, our team gets to work implementing any necessary changes in order to bring you to a state of confident compliance. No matter what aspect of your cybersecurity is lacking, we will match it with a tested and proven solution to make sure it doesn’t put you at risk any longer.
Compliance Management: Compliance is not a one-time effort. Ongoing compliance requires ongoing management, monitoring your systems for any potential cybersecurity instances, and reporting to the appropriate parties. As your IT systems age, and compliance requirements are updated, our team will make sure you stay compliant, applying necessary changes as need be.

Don’t put your compliance at risk — NST’s team of compliance experts are available to manage it for you.

Matthew Brown

Network Solutions & Technology is a unique full-service information technology service provider in New York City, Long Island & The Tri-State Area with the most skilled and knowledgeable certified professionals working in the industry.