Data Privacy: Our Commitment to You
Instructure’s Privacy Officer, Daisy Bennett, will discuss our commitment to privacy and responsible data usage, and our efforts to enable insights while protecting privacy and security.
[ Music ] >> Hi, everybody. I'm Daisy Bennett, and I joined the Instructure family about three months ago. I'm Instructure's Privacy Officer, and my role's to serve as the internal privacy advocate for our customers, our students, and our employees. Over the last 15 years, I've had the privilege to work with a number of amazing companies develop strong, transparent, meaningful privacy programs. As a privacy advocate, it is my mission to help Instructure hold itself to the highest legal and ethical standard. That mission is paramount in education.
At Instructure, we are privileged to provide our services to students and educators worldwide. It is our duty to treat the information entrusted to us as stewards. We are stewards of student and institutional data. Therefore, it's imperative that we continue to ensure that privacy standards are embedded in our corporate DNA. At the heart of privacy is the ethical use of data, and it's my belief that the use of those data needs to be understandable and transparent to everyone.
My primary goal is to encourage and implement radical transparency in our community to empower our students, our parents, our educators, and our institutions. So, why is privacy important? It's important because we live in a data driven world. From the internet to various uses of social media channels many of us use daily, we are assuring our personal lives more than ever before online. With increased access to individual data comes the heightened responsibility to treat this data and information ethically, transparently, and fairly. The ed tech environment is highly regulated and complex.
In supporting learning objectives, institutions may use a number of different technology products. Students and parents and educators often struggle to understand how their data are processed by using these different technology companies. In addition, there are many different laws and regulations, policies, procedures, that may change and be different across countries and states and even districts. It is difficult for students and parents to understand how to protect their own privacy. Because privacy is paramount in education, privacy standards are embedded in our corporate DNA as we strive to support our educators and students worldwide.
We know that data collection is ubiquitous, and we are surrounded by devices and software that collect these data. Because technology moves at breakneck speed, regulatory regimes have difficulty keeping up with innovation. So, you may be wondering what is the privacy of student data look like. We often hear about the misuse of data which can overshadow the positive impacts properly handled student data can have on the learning experience. We believe that student data exists primarily to support teaching and learning practices, allowing educators to evaluate student performance and enable students to showcase their achievements.
I personally believe that ed tech providers have the unique ability to leverage our expertise in technology to help students and educators understand how their data are being used. Our foundational privacy principles are how we treat student data and institutional data at Instructure. The first principle is transparency. That is being clear, open, and fair. The second principle is accountability.
That is the ability to demonstrate our privacy practices in concrete and tangible ways. The third principle is integrity, and that is ensuring the trustworthiness and consistency of the data that we process. The fourth principle is security, that is protecting student data, and the fifth principle is confidentiality. That's access limitation and data minimization. As part of our support for our privacy principles, we've implemented the privacy by design framework.
The privacy by design framework advances the view that the future of privacy cannot be assured solely by compliance with regulatory frameworks. Rather, privacy assurance must ideally become an organization's default mode of operations. The framework consists of these seven operational elements, and if you'd like to learn more about those elements, please join me in my breakout session. I'd like to introduce our new privacy website as well. Our privacy website is our effort to encourage radical transparency.
We have developed a number of pages within our website that answer frequently asked questions about our privacy practices. I'd also like to reiterate that this privacy website is a growing, living document. As we move forward and enhance our practices and develop deeper communications with the community, we will build the site out to provide resources, web pages, webinars, and white papers for individuals to learn more about privacy and how Instructure uses data. As we move forward for the remainder of this year and next, I'd like to share with you some projects on our privacy road map. As part of our privacy by design framework and in addition to our regular security audits, we are performing an enterprise level audit on our data use practices across the organization to ensure that we are living up to our commitments.
We are also creating privacy information packages to provide schools during the onboarding process that include best practices for data privacy and data use and how they can use Instructure to support those practices. We will also be providing this information to the larger community. Additionally, I will be providing quarterly updates and reports to our community, sharing our improvements and our privacy practices. We are also engaging with community groups to ensure that we have open lines of communication about our privacy practices and engage in feedback from the community. We are also developing age appropriate privacy training for students and users and teachers to help them understand how to protect their privacy while using Canvas and in the digital environment.
We're living in unprecedented times right now. This year has brought about intense and rapid changes in the way we deliver education. The speed at which student and educators have had to embrace technology can be overwhelming. We understand that it can be challenging to navigate the complex area of privacy and technology, and I want to underscore that Instructure is here to support you and your students by providing Canvas securely in a firm foundation of privacy. I'd like to provide this contact information, so please reach out if you have questions. We are here to answer any. Thank you for your time.
At Instructure, we are privileged to provide our services to students and educators worldwide. It is our duty to treat the information entrusted to us as stewards. We are stewards of student and institutional data. Therefore, it's imperative that we continue to ensure that privacy standards are embedded in our corporate DNA. At the heart of privacy is the ethical use of data, and it's my belief that the use of those data needs to be understandable and transparent to everyone.
My primary goal is to encourage and implement radical transparency in our community to empower our students, our parents, our educators, and our institutions. So, why is privacy important? It's important because we live in a data driven world. From the internet to various uses of social media channels many of us use daily, we are assuring our personal lives more than ever before online. With increased access to individual data comes the heightened responsibility to treat this data and information ethically, transparently, and fairly. The ed tech environment is highly regulated and complex.
In supporting learning objectives, institutions may use a number of different technology products. Students and parents and educators often struggle to understand how their data are processed by using these different technology companies. In addition, there are many different laws and regulations, policies, procedures, that may change and be different across countries and states and even districts. It is difficult for students and parents to understand how to protect their own privacy. Because privacy is paramount in education, privacy standards are embedded in our corporate DNA as we strive to support our educators and students worldwide.
We know that data collection is ubiquitous, and we are surrounded by devices and software that collect these data. Because technology moves at breakneck speed, regulatory regimes have difficulty keeping up with innovation. So, you may be wondering what is the privacy of student data look like. We often hear about the misuse of data which can overshadow the positive impacts properly handled student data can have on the learning experience. We believe that student data exists primarily to support teaching and learning practices, allowing educators to evaluate student performance and enable students to showcase their achievements.
I personally believe that ed tech providers have the unique ability to leverage our expertise in technology to help students and educators understand how their data are being used. Our foundational privacy principles are how we treat student data and institutional data at Instructure. The first principle is transparency. That is being clear, open, and fair. The second principle is accountability.
That is the ability to demonstrate our privacy practices in concrete and tangible ways. The third principle is integrity, and that is ensuring the trustworthiness and consistency of the data that we process. The fourth principle is security, that is protecting student data, and the fifth principle is confidentiality. That's access limitation and data minimization. As part of our support for our privacy principles, we've implemented the privacy by design framework.
The privacy by design framework advances the view that the future of privacy cannot be assured solely by compliance with regulatory frameworks. Rather, privacy assurance must ideally become an organization's default mode of operations. The framework consists of these seven operational elements, and if you'd like to learn more about those elements, please join me in my breakout session. I'd like to introduce our new privacy website as well. Our privacy website is our effort to encourage radical transparency.
We have developed a number of pages within our website that answer frequently asked questions about our privacy practices. I'd also like to reiterate that this privacy website is a growing, living document. As we move forward and enhance our practices and develop deeper communications with the community, we will build the site out to provide resources, web pages, webinars, and white papers for individuals to learn more about privacy and how Instructure uses data. As we move forward for the remainder of this year and next, I'd like to share with you some projects on our privacy road map. As part of our privacy by design framework and in addition to our regular security audits, we are performing an enterprise level audit on our data use practices across the organization to ensure that we are living up to our commitments.
We are also creating privacy information packages to provide schools during the onboarding process that include best practices for data privacy and data use and how they can use Instructure to support those practices. We will also be providing this information to the larger community. Additionally, I will be providing quarterly updates and reports to our community, sharing our improvements and our privacy practices. We are also engaging with community groups to ensure that we have open lines of communication about our privacy practices and engage in feedback from the community. We are also developing age appropriate privacy training for students and users and teachers to help them understand how to protect their privacy while using Canvas and in the digital environment.
We're living in unprecedented times right now. This year has brought about intense and rapid changes in the way we deliver education. The speed at which student and educators have had to embrace technology can be overwhelming. We understand that it can be challenging to navigate the complex area of privacy and technology, and I want to underscore that Instructure is here to support you and your students by providing Canvas securely in a firm foundation of privacy. I'd like to provide this contact information, so please reach out if you have questions. We are here to answer any. Thank you for your time.