For schools and universities, information security is extremely important. In this blog we explain how you can keep your communication network user-friendly and secure.
As a manager, director or teacher you will often ask yourself that question. And of course, your question will be focused on the safety of the pupils, students and staff. Is there a safe school or university climate for them? Can they develop themselves into happy and successful people? Does school provide a safe educational environment for the children and youngsters we are responsible for?
It is logical that your focus is on those questions. It is your profession and your responsibility. At RSconnect we look at the safety of your school from a different angle. We focus on a relatively small topic which sounds almost negligible compared to your challenges. But a topic which is nevertheless important.
Our focus is on Unified Communications and VoIP telephony security. Our question is for example whether the desktop telephones at your school or university are protected against abuse? In many organizations – including schools and universities – there are a lot of flexible workspaces, with a lot of desktop telephones.
You don’t want these telephones to be accessible for everyone in the building. Because, if every visitor can easily access these desktop telephones, how big is the risks that parents and other relatives can receive phone calls from people who unlawful claim they represent school (as proven by their calling line id). How big is the risk that parents provide without any concern sensitive information to such a caller? The kind of information they typically wouldn’t share with other people? They only share it since they think they are talking to a teacher of their child, a mentor, the study coach or the school doctor.
Security is a top priority at schools and universities. But does that include IT and telephony security?
It is for this reason that is important to protect desktop telephones with a username and a password or PIN. To prevent unauthorized access and prevent unlawful calls to innocent parents. But also to make sure that contact details of children and parents are not illegally downloaded or voicemails are being eavesdropped.
Our software makes this telephony security more user-friendly. Because, when people have to log into their telephone, there is still a security risk. Logging into a telephone is not user-friendly – one has to enter username and PIN via the telephone keypad – and the immediate effect is often that people log in once but for the sake of simplicity never log out. So, most telephones stay logged in all the time.
With our Active Login Manager software, logging into a telephone is synchronized with logging into a computer. As soon as someone opens his laptop or logs into his or her computer, the telephone on that desk is automatically logged in as well. And when he leaves and takes his laptop with him, the telephone is immediately logged out again. The user doesn’t have to think or do anything to log into and log out from that telephone.
