In this episode, Nathan Sirois from Balsam Technologies talks about managed IT for Massachusetts schools and colleges. He discusses device management, secure Wi-Fi, FERPA-related privacy concerns, classroom technology reliability, cybersecurity awareness, and summer planning for IT upgrades.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Nathan Sirois, Support Engineer at Balsam Technologies, a managed IT services company based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, offering cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, network support, cloud migrations, data backup, and more. Today we’re talking about managed IT for Massachusetts schools and colleges. Welcome, Nathan.
Nathan Sirois: Hey, John. Thanks for having me.
Managing Devices Across Schools and Colleges
John: Sure. Nathan, how is managing technology for a school or a college different when the network has to support administrators, teachers, students, guests, and support classroom equipment and a constantly changing collection of devices?
Nathan: One of the things that we find is really unique with school systems is because there’s so many diverse devices that are out there for both the teachers and the students, it’s really essential for any managed service provider supporting you to have really concrete remote management of those systems.
It could be the Chromebooks that your end-user students are using that you need a mobile device manager like Jamf or the Google Admin Console set up correctly to manage. It could be all your teachers’ laptops. There could be segmentation with that where some teachers might have desktops as well that then you have to have those properly managed. You could have smart boards in your classroom also…they’re always fun to troubleshoot. And just having somebody in place that can support all those different systems, and there’s so many more systems that are in place as well, is really essential for your school to be running at the pace that your kids are running.
Secure Wi-Fi, FERPA, and Student Data Protection
John: Right. And how can educational institutions provide convenient Wi-Fi, and access to things like learning resources, while still protecting student and staff information and meeting privacy responsibilities like FERPA?
Nathan: One of the best ways that you can meet those standards is doing proper network segmentation, either with your internal IT department or a managed service provider coming in and assisting. So something like Wi-Fi systems, setting up a guest network that’s separate on the network and prevents any outside sources from either coming into your school building and accessing your network without authorization, even going to your parking lot, and then potentially they have a network signal where somebody’s sitting in their car and they’re on your network and you don’t even know it. Putting proper protections in place for those systems that you can’t always keep eyes on who’s connecting to them is really essential to do with someone security-minded in your organization.
Reliable Classroom Technology and Learning Platforms
John: And what should schools prioritize to keep classroom technology, learning platforms, and administrative systems reliable so technical problems don’t interrupt the teaching and learning?
Nathan: For a lot of schools today, keeping a cloud-first mindset is really essential for the platforms that your kids are using. Always having support and having that availability of systems is really critical for teachers. And kind of gone are the days of all the localized platforms that you can just troubleshoot on the fly because they’re just not reliable enough anymore for the needs that you have.
Along with that, keeping a good lifecycle replacement plan in place for all of the physical hardware that you do need in your classrooms is really essential as failed devices or glitching systems can really negatively impact your classroom in a big way if those systems are not being properly managed.
Cybersecurity Awareness for Schools and Colleges
John: And why are schools and colleges such frequent targets for phishing and ransomware and other types of cyber attacks? And how can employee and student awareness help reduce those risks?
Nathan: A lot of times schools can be the first targets for security incidents because of the fact that a lot of the end users are not thinking with a security first mindset. A lot of your professional organizations, people are having professional trainings daily or weekly based on the critical nature of the data that’s being used and the compliance standards that they have to meet. And while schools are responsible for a lot of these same standards, it can be difficult to be thinking about cybersecurity when you’re really more concerned about serving the kids that are in your classroom.
So having regular trainings for your staff, having posted announcements about the latest upcoming security threats, or anything related to that, is really essential for your staff, and just making sure that they’re aware of the threats that are out there and protecting your school body.
Summer IT Planning and Equipment Upgrades
John: And then, finally, with school systems, most of the time they’re not running during the summer or they have a very small staff running during the summer and the students aren’t in school. How can schools use those summer breaks for equipment replacement cycles and long-term technology planning and making strategic improvements instead of just waiting for systems to fail, maybe during the school year when they’re essential?
Nathan: For most of our school clients, we tend to have sort of a full blowout plan of all of the IT upgrades and technical support troubleshooting that they need during their summer break so that during the school year they can just be focusing on the classrooms.
So we have one client that recently we ended up doing all over one week of summer where no teachers were in the office. We replaced all their network equipment as far as switching. We went in and switched out all of their Wi-Fi systems and we ran a bunch of new network cables for offices that needed support that didn’t have it before. And all of that would’ve been really disruptive in an actual classroom setting if it was during the school year.
While sometimes it’s unavoidable to have those interruptions and troubleshoot school systems that are down and providing inconveniences to your classroom, it’s really important that any managed service provider that you work with works with you around your tight schedules and making sure that you can provide the education first that you’re promising to these students and preventing any interruptions due to technical downtime.
John: All right, well, that’s really great information, Nathan. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Nathan: Thank you, John.
John: And for more information, you can visit the Balsam Technologies website at balsamtechnologies.com or call 978-281-3339.
