Studentnet® Cloudburst

July 2017

Studentnet is proud to announce new features and new services being supported in our latest release of Cloudwork. Plus the issues around the privacy of School data are now being reported on in the Australian mainstream media.  Read more below...

Automated Email Notifications

At the request of one of our existing schools, we are very close to completing the development of a generalised email notification feature. In its initial release, the feature will send a welcome email on the creation of a new account. The text of the email is customisable by your school in your Cloudwork dashboard. The email template will support inclusion of html mark up.

Progressively, we will be extending this feature to support other events. For instance password reset will be another event. Each type of event will have its own template for the text content modifiable through your dashboard. The development of the initial release of the feature is technically complete. Implementation is due to occur at our specifying school this week.


Sydney Morning Herald Article: The privacy of our school students is up for grabs

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has an extensive article highlighting the issues surrounding the privacy of school data especially that data pertaining to students. The article has been written by three Queensland academics. It highlights the lack of co-ordination and policy around these issues.

This topic is not a new one. Studentnet has been committed to implementing privacy best practice for over 10 years. Privacy features have been built into Cloudwork from its very inception in 2007.

The article mentions the work of NSIP alluding to the promotion of the System Interoperability Framework (SIF). Studentnet has been a member of SIF for many years. In addition to SIF, Studentnet is also a member of the Ed-Fi alliance (sponsored by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation) and the locally developed Lightweight Interoperability Standard for Schools (LISS).

Studentnet works hard to maintain these memberships to keep our Cloudwork product up to date with the latest data interoperability standards. Doing so allows us to maximise the benefits that can be delivered to schools by Cloudwork.

This challenge is, however, more than a technical one. As today's article highlights there are also serious policy and standards challenges. Studentnet's involvement with groups such as the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner prepares schools for this rapidly evolving area. Most recently we were a Partner in the Privacy Awareness Week activities of the OAIC.

Cloudwork helps school manage privacy issues because it enables schools to control the flow and use of identity data from a central location. Through Cloudwork, schools now have available a central repository and log of identity data and events. With this they can implement detailed monitoring of activity. In addition, they can more readily complete diagnostic investigations especially with regard to any suspected untoward activity.

In addition, Cloudwork enables schools to very precisely control the identity data attributes that are communicated to the services being used by the school. This ensures that services only receive the precise information that they need and no more. Again, this hands control of the communication of the identity data into the hands where it belongs, that is, the school's hands.

The privacy features that we have built into Cloudwork are driven the real world issues that you face every day. We encourage every school to raise with us whatever may be the latest privacy issue you may encounter so that we can build even more capability into Cloudwork.

Let us know if you have any questions.


Best Regards
The Studentnet Team

STUDENTNET®     ABN 90 001 966 892
Suite 1, 89 Jones St, Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia
Email: info@studentnet.net     Site: studentnet.net
Tel +61 2 9281 1626       NOC +61 2 9281 3905

Highly Commended: IPv6 – ANZIA Awards 2012
Finalist: Security and Privacy – ANZIA Awards 2011
Highly Commended: Australian Privacy Awards – 2008