partnership with the IT departments of their district.” Many technology vendors encourage school districts to use cloud servers, which can often offer stronger se- curity than an individual school with onsite servers. “In general, an emerging best practice is to consider using cloud-based products and systems,” said Justin Malcolm, director of product management for Safe Fleet. “School Districts often lack the sophisticated IT expertise, infrastructure and budget to deal with the ever-expand- ing footprint of professional cybersecurity. Work with suppliers that have the scale, sophistication, maturity, and financial strength to provide products, infrastructure, and practices that mitigate these kinds of risks.” Safe Fleet has utilized cloud storage since 2014 and is
increasingly using Microsoft. ByteCurve and Synovia, host of the Here Comes the Bus App, utilize Amazon Web Services for cloud capacity. Meanwhile, Zonar’s Ground Traffic Control is in the Google cloud. Last year, Transfinder moved its Infofinder i to the cloud. Tyler also resides there as does Edulog. With all school bus data stored in the cloud, transpor-
tation departments eliminate the risk of dealing with ransomware attacks directly. Nevertheless it is important for transportation management to understand what data vendors are collecting, where it is stored, and who has access to it. While designing the parent-app for tracking buses, Bill
Westerman, the senior vice president of marketing for Synovia’s parent company CalAmp, said limiting access to information was also a key protection built into the program. The app for example limits what can be seen by individual users who sign up with a unique student ID number. “We designed a system so that when a parent signs
up, they only get information about their child’s bus and they only see information about their stop location,” Westerman explained. “We show some visibility in terms of the bus approaching the stop, but again it’s for the sake of safety and ensuring that people have the infor- mation that they really need about their specific child.” In addition to limiting user data access, transportation
departments should take a hard look at the vendors they are permitting to use their network.
Arrive safe and on time.
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