While sharing photos is an incredible way to engage your school community, it can be challenging to find the right technology to manage your school’s photos safely and securely.
With protection of student information always a top priority, Schoolbox is excited to have partnered with GeosnapShot to deliver a safe and secure photo management solution, designed for schools. Integrated within your Schoolbox instance, end-to-end encryption ensures the security and privacy of photos stored on the GeoSnapShot platform.
When managing photos within an educational context, there are a number of important features to consider. From secure storage and privacy protection, through to parent engagement and photo redaction, this article highlights the things to look for when choosing a photo management solution for your school.
What data is stored and where?
How and where data is stored is a core component of the Australian Privacy Principles, particularly when we are talking about images of students.
In Australia, schools and businesses that collect any form of data must comply with the Australian Privacy Principles. As part of the Privacy Act, these principles describe an organisation’s rights and obligations around:
- the collection, use and disclosure of personal information
- an organisation or agency’s governance and accountability
- integrity and correction of personal information
- the rights of individuals to access their personal information
GeoSnapShot and Privacy
Over 10 million photos, across 73 countries, are stored securely on the GeoSnapShot platform, with strict adherence to the data privacy laws in the UK, Europe, USA, Canada and Australia.
GeoSnapShot uses Amazon Web Services and the school’s photos and data from Australia are stored in Australia. All data is held securely with end-to-end encryption, ensuring images can only be accessed by authorised users within your Schoolbox instance.
GeoSnapShot does not collect, store or have access to any personal data such as the child’s name, as this data is not needed to power the photo recognition technology – the only data stored is the image.
Additional privacy settings can be enabled to ensure families can only view photos which include their child.
The facial recognition software used by GeoSnapShot is protected through Amazon Web Server encryption, preventing any association between a child’s identity and facial recognition information.
You can export all your photos from GeoSnapShot at any point should you need to.
Storage of data in the cloud
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is used for the end-to-end technology architecture of GeoSnapShot. AWS is used by 86% of the world’s websites including some of the most successful platforms in the world such as Apple, Airbnb, Netflix, and LinkedIn.
Data security is an important component when selecting cloud software. There are many benefits to moving to the cloud, including a secure environment for online learning and data storage. To ensure the privacy and protection of data, Schoolbox sensitive data is stored in the highly secured AWS data centres.
Schoolbox currently utilises the Sydney AWS region for Australian/NZ customers to ensure data sovereignty is protected. This will ensure your data remains under the protection of the Australian Privacy Principles.
Managing consent in GeoSnapShot
Managing consent is a challenge for all schools, and the administration of this is often a manual process. Using GeoSnapShot through Schoolbox, schools can simply and easily redact photos of students where consent has not been provided.
All your team needs to do is drag and drop images into the photo security administration tab. The incredibly powerful facial recognition software included in GeoSnapShot then does all the work for you, and automatically removes every image of children who have not given consent.
Photo recognition environment
Get back hours of time with ‘on-demand’ facial recognition—no need to tag every photo. Upload and distribute to parents and families without delay. GeoSnapShot does not store personal student data, that all stays within Schoolbox for your privacy and security
Instantaneous photo redaction
Automatic removal of photos with children who cannot be featured.
Advanced security features
Ensure privacy with settings that enable only those with relevant entry levels into Schoolbox to access photos.
Schoolbox + GeoSnapShot
When managing images of children there are numerous considerations, including:
- Data security and protection
- Privacy compliance
- Redaction + consent
- Access + permissions
Using GeoSnapShot, student data is protected, with only authenticated users having access to your school’s photos from within your Schoolbox instance. Additional privacy controls can be set so that anyone who is not authenticated to your Schoolbox instance will be blocked from seeing the photos, unless they have been given a secure pass code.
Built to reflect SIS permissions, the GeoSnapShot redaction process delivers immediate photo redaction. Saving a significant amount of time, schools can bulk upload student profile images for redaction via a simple drag and drop process. Once a student’s photo is added for redaction, all past and future photos of the redacted child will be blocked from view.
Want to put your mind at ease? Chat to one of our Schoolbox experts today and learn more about protecting your school’s data sovereignty.
