Guess who may be bringing unwanted risk to your organization? Surprisingly, it’s a rogue employee. Even Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd, had this to say: “Most cyber attacks are not from nation states. Most, like 95 percent, come from within a company’s four walls.”

But do you know how to spot them? And how you can stop them?

Many of the biggest attacks originate from inside the enterprise from fully authenticated users. And these rogue employees don’t always have malicious intent; sometimes they’re dedicated employees who mistakenly committed an oversight.

Our team is gearing up for Interop 2015 in Las Vegas next week and we’re excited to be part of a great event! What we’re looking forward to the most is helping you find new ways to address your current IT headaches and plan for the future. 

 As I was preparing for tomorrow’s CoSN 2015 New York CTO Clinic on Long Island, I came across somearticles from the other side of the country, in Colorado, debating topics like protecting student data, protecting student privacy, and bolstering FERPA.

Peek inside any K-12 classroom and you may find students taking a test on a desktop computer or a teacher connecting with a satellite school via video conferencing. Technology has transformed the regular classrooms of today to the learning centers of tomorrow.

Digital tools are as critical to student learning today as pen and paper ​have been in the past. We at Identity Automation support the addition of the Enhancing Education Through Technology ​bill ​to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act​ (ESEA)​.​ This bill would ensure a dedicated and well-funded tech program would be part of the revised ESEA.​ The​ effort ​to make this revision ​is currently led by Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and is up for a vote later this afternoon. 

Internal security vulnerabilities are the most likely ‘attacks’ a business faces. Many of the biggest attacks actually originate from inside your enterprise and come from fully authenticated users - your employees. Some of these intrusions stem from employees bypassing security standards, while others are caused by employees who may not know the security standards. But the threat we’re seeing more and more is the employee we refer to as the access hoarder.

I’ve attended the CoSN Annual Conference for the past seven years and in each of those years, I’ve run into more and more people who are customers of Identity Automation. It’s been an interesting transition going from being a vendor no one’s heard of who’s providing a solution to a challenge schools don’t know much about to becoming a leader in a space that’s absolutely pivotal to education technology. It’s also been very satisfying to see the company mature and grow over these past seven years.

Last week our team attended the first “Building Bridges” Washington State Higher Education Technology Conference. The event brought together a diverse group of post-secondary education professionals focused on how technology can be used to maximize student success on campus and as they go into the workforce. Education IT staff, eLearning staff, library staff, institutional research staff, and campus faculty leadership were all in attendance. This broad representation of disciplines was fitting since the conference’s theme was “Building an environment of collaboration across boundaries”.

Next week, I will be taking part in the CoSN Annual Conference from March 16-19 in Atlanta. CoSN, or Consortium for School Networking, is the leading association for school district technology leaders. I’ve attended this conference before; however, this year’s theme of ‘Enabling Your Digital Leap’ is quite intriguing.