As the 2022 Cost of Insider Threats: Global Report reveals, insider threat incidents have risen 44% over the past two years, with costs per incident up more than a third to $15.38 million. We recognize that cybersecurity is a top concern in education—from IT professionals who provide frontline support to technology decision makers that purchase services—and our cybersecurity solutions reflect both their needs as well as our expertise as a leading security company. 

Microsoft Information Protection and Governance, included with Microsoft 365 Education A5, provides built-in, intelligent, and extensible solutions to help schools and districts to secure their data wherever it lives or travels. It allows school IT to enable secured and compliant collaboration with data loss prevention policies that help avoid leaks and restrict external sharing of sensitive data, while providing the ability to configure protection and governance labels and locate sensitive data and understand how it is being used. 

Meeting the unique security needs of schools

Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance helps to minimize communication risks by helping schools to detect, capture, and act on inappropriate messages in their organization.  

Let’s say that a local high school has issued their students laptops for school use. To mitigate student harassment within the school’s network, the IT team creates communication compliance policies. Since students communicate via Microsoft Teams, they created a policy to monitor Teams for any profanity or harassment. With the policy in place, teachers of specific classes and school admin will be notified when the system flags harmful messages. Teachers and admins can then investigate the issues and even work with IT to remove messages to limit exposure! 

Data loss prevention is another crucial issue schools face due to the extensive exchange of sensitive data in a school’s message systems. To enforce compliance requirements, data loss prevention features make managing sensitive data easier than ever before. 

School districts often rely on third party organizations to help with classroom curriculum and evaluate the effectiveness of school programs. Student scores can be shared to help with these efforts but—to ensure personal student information isn’t shared outside of the district—the school district’s IT department needs to create data loss prevention policies for student information. If there is an attempt to share information with anyone outside of the school, the rule will go into effect and interaction will be flagged. School IT can block access to the records being shared and—in some cases—prevent the initial communication containing the personal records from being delivered. 

Microsoft Purview Information Protection helps organizations discover, classify, and protect sensitive data wherever it lives and travels. It provides tools to understand a school’s data, protect it, and prevent data loss. 

For example, a middle school might want to ensure that staff aren’t accessing sensitive school resources on their unmanaged home devices. To ensure that the school’s data is protected, the IT department leverages Microsoft Purview Information Protection to protect sensitive student information such as student records from being accessed on unmanaged devices. If a staff member tries logging onto their school account from their personal device to access their records, this action will be denied. The school’s IT department can set up similar protections for other applications and sensitive data from unmanaged devices. 

A trusted name in security

Microsoft believes that when students, educators, and staff work in a secure and trusted platform, everyone can achieve more. With Microsoft security solutions, schools and districts can improve their risk and compliance posture, safeguard data wherever it lives, better understand and govern this data, and streamline their overall privacy management. 

Microsoft is consistently recognized as a leader by industry analysts. In recent years, Microsoft has been named a six-time Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management, rates a strong positive in each KuppingerCole’s product and leadership category, and was named Company of the Year for the Global Identity and Access Management industry by Frost & Sullivan. 

Almost all of a district’s identity management needs can be taken care of with Microsoft Entra, a security product family that unites management in a unified platform. Entra works with tools like Microsoft Entra ID, Intune, and School Data Sync to connect accounts and data intuitively and securely in ways that make sense for education and save IT administrators time.  

With Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Entra ID Governance, school IT can enable unified SSO access and enhance security with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and apply least-privilege and just-in-time access policies to safeguard a school’s administrator accounts. 

Microsoft Purview security solutions

• Microsoft Purview helps keep school data safe with a range of solutions for unified data governance, information protection, risk management, and compliance, providing everything from data auditing to insider risk management. 
• Microsoft Priva helps schools and districts to protect personal data and keep up with ever-changing and complex privacy requirements by identifying user data and critical privacy risks and automating risk mitigation.  
• Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager offers schools 100 pre-built assessments for common compliance standards and regulations, or custom assessments to meet a school or district’s unique compliance needs. 

In a comparison of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention and Google Cloud Data Loss Prevention on G2.com, reviewers found that Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention better met the needs of their business than Google Cloud Data Loss Prevention. When comparing the quality of feature updates and ongoing product support, reviewers felt that Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention was the preferred option. One reviewer noted that “[Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention] has the best data governance capabilities, data discovery and data analytics.” 

A solution for every role

Protecting student data is a primary concern for school and district IT departments. Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager creates a risk-based compliance score and provides actionable step-by-step guidance on improvement actions. Even better, schools can use pre-built templates for compliance with standards including COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) and CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act). 

District and school leaders are tasked with preserving student safety and privacy. By protecting school data, leaders maintain community trust and avoid costly data breaches or recovery costs. Leaders in Prince William County depend on Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance to protect its users and data.  

Data breaches can also interrupt learning and hinder parental trust. Teachers can depend on Microsoft Education A5 security to keep their classrooms FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and CIPA compliant. 

Together, we can quickly identify and act

Microsoft security solutions helps schools to identify data risks and manage regulatory requirements, protect sensitive data across apps, clouds, and devices (even if it’s not stored on Microsoft platforms), and gain visibility into all your school’s sensitive data and manage assets across your entire environment.  

Schools need to be able to quickly identify and act on insider risks with an integrated end-to-end approach. Schools with Microsoft 365 Education A5 security can rely upon Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management for dynamic controls and automated mitigation.  

Want to learn more? Grow your cybersecurity knowledge and skills with these resources: 

• Security, Compliance, and Identity training on Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Purview training on Microsoft Learn 
• Microsoft Entra Blog – Microsoft Community Hub

The post How authentication and identity governance help protect schools appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We believe today’s AI innovations will power a paradigm shift as big as mobile, cloud, web, or PC. That’s why we were excited to announce more than 100 new updates across every facet of the Microsoft technology portfolio—many of which will have a direct impact on education in the coming weeks, months and years. Industry experts highlighted everything from game-changing generative AI that can help save time and transform learning to new cybersecurity features that will help keep schools safe from the latest cyberattacks. 

With Microsoft Copilot I was able to near-instantly create an entire quarter-long, project-based learning assignment for fourth through eighth grades and simultaneously assign each of the Kansas standards that I had requested for every core subject.

Olivia Sumner, fourth through sixth grade teacher, Wichita Public Schools, U.S.

At first glance, many of these announcements may seem like science fiction, but the era of AI is bringing about these and many other transformational changes to education which will help personalize learning for students of various abilities and better prepare them for the future of work. 

A new era of AI has arrived

AI was everywhere in this year’s Ignite sessions including Satya Nadella’s opening keynote and over 100 sessions! Copilot was one of the standout product innovations from Microsoft this year and we’re excited about its potential in education. According to latest Work Trend Index research report, 70% of Copilot for Microsoft 365’s earliest users say that using generative AI at work has made them more productive, with 68% saying it improved the quality of their work and 77% saying that they didn’t want to give it up.  

• Copilot with commercial data protection for faculty (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) launched earlier this year powered by world-class GPT-4 model to save educators and staff time and unlock creativity. Educators in Wichita Public Schools are leveraging the power of AI in Copilot to save valuable hours during lesson planning and to personalize learning content for students of various abilities. Check out our AI for education hub to learn how AI can support personalized learning, automate daily tasks, and provide insights for data-driven decision making.   
• Copilot in Windows is the next step toward making Windows the destination for the best AI experiences. It empowers you to create faster and makes once complicated tasks simpler by using the power of AI to lessen cognitive load. Microsoft has made accessing the power of Copilot seamless as it’s always right there on the taskbar or with the Win+C keyboard shortcut providing assistance alongside other apps. These features are available in preview on the latest Windows devices—in the classroom, lecture hall or at home.  
• Microsoft Copilot Studio announced at Ignite, is a low-code tool to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build your own copilot experiences with Azure AI Studio. It brings together a set of powerful conversational capabilities including custom GPTs and generative AI plugins. IT can customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 with your own workloads—build, test, and publish standalone copilots and custom GPTs and manage and secure your customizations.  
• Microsoft has demonstrated its commitment to Responsible AI practices. In partnership with Code.org, this week we announced Minecraft Hour of Code: Generation AI. With resources to help educators run Hour of Code events in their schools and teach computer science, Hour of Code encourages all students to explore coding and responsible AI in the fun and engaging Minecraft world.  
• We announced numerous updates to Azure, including Microsoft Copilot for Azure—an AI companion for IT that simplifies day-to-day IT administration and helps IT teams unlock untapped Azure functionality.
• Another announcement, Azure AI Studio, is a unified platform to help organizations more easily explore, build, test and deploy AI apps. Finally, Azure OpenAI Service allows you to build your own Copilot and generative AI applications. To see how these developments are being used in education, read how a young inventor in UAE is building an AI Tutor with Microsoft’s AI capabilities including Azure OpenAI Service. 
• Learning Accelerators are AI-powered learning tools seamlessly integrated in Microsoft 365 Education to give individual students more opportunities to learn, practice, and receive specific coaching. Speaker Coach is a Learning Accelerator utilizing AI to give real-time pointers on pacing, pitch and filler words. Reading Progress leverages the power of Azure OpenAI Service to create personalized reading passages based on words or phonics rules that a class or specific student found most challenging. 

 Microsoft AI innovations are transforming how educators teach and students learn.

Unified and evolved cybersecurity tools

At Ignite, we also demonstrated our commitment to helping all organizations–including schools—keep their users and data secure. Considering more than 80% of malware attacks target the education sector, world-class cybersecurity solutions from Microsoft ensure that schools, districts, and ministries of education have the products and resources they need to establish and maintain a strong security posture. Microsoft technologies are built on trust. Moreover, we believe a school’s data is a school’s data—protected by the most comprehensive enterprise compliance and security controls—and is not used to train foundation AI models.   

• The future of security means both leveraging security tools built with AI and building features that help protect AI. At Ignite, Microsoft announced the next major step in this industry-defining vision: combining the power of leading solutions in security information and event management (SIEM), extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI for security into the first unified security operations platform.  
• All of the Microsoft 365 Education plans offer built-in management and cybersecurity tools to help protect against threats. Microsoft 365 A5 plan allows you to integrate more advanced cybersecurity measures that make it easy to guard, manage, and maximize learning and productivity for students, educators, and staff. Connect with an expert to find out which plan has the right protections for your institution. 
• Effective cybersecurity starts with knowledgeable leadership and educators. Enroll in the Protecting our Future course for leaders or the Building Cybersecurity Resilience course for educators on the Microsoft Learn Educator Center to implement CISA-recommended cybersecurity practices that foster awareness and preparedness, safeguard schools, and counter cyber threats effectively. 
• Students can continue learning with the Minecraft Education Cyber Collection. The collection contains resources for learners from first grade through high school and is aligned to both Cyber.org and CSTA standards, meeting the needs of most school systems for cybersecurity education. 

Thrive in a changing world

The ways in which our tools are helping to prepare the workforce of tomorrow took center stage at Ignite, where we introduced a host of updates, ranging from improvements in the Microsoft Cloud to enhancements in the essential learning and creation tools used by schools every day. 

 Microsoft Teams and our latest AI tools can help educators, students, and leaders thrive.

• Microsoft Teams enables effective collaboration and communication for more than 320 million users around the world and we’ve seen some amazing use cases in education. At Ignite, Microsoft has announced numerous AI-powered improvements to Microsoft Teams. As part of our continued efforts to provide updates and upgrades to the Microsoft Teams experience, the Teams for Education app has been re-designed on a foundation of speed, performance, and flexibility, and has now launched as the next evolution of Microsoft Teams—new Microsoft Teams for Education. To utilize these improvements, we recommend upgrading to new Teams as soon as possible.  
• In this new era of AI, we are redefining cloud infrastructure, from silicon to systems, to prepare for AI in every school and business, and in every app. Updates to Microsoft Azure mean that IT admins can use tools like Azure AI Studio to create low-code AI services to create innovative solutions in schools. 
• Microsoft Fabric revolutionizes data analytics for education, offering an integrated platform for streamlined processes and enhanced collaboration. With Microsoft Fabric, we are excited to explore unique education use cases to optimize student outcomes, modernize data management, and facilitate secure cross-campus research. 

If you weren’t able to attend live sessions, you can still watch many of them on-demand at Microsoft Ignite. You can also learn more about how Microsoft is bringing these exciting announcements to the classroom and the lecture hall at Microsoft Education or by signing up for a free online AI course using the Microsoft Learn Educator Center. 

The post AI and security breakthroughs from Microsoft Ignite 2023 that schools won’t want to miss appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

During November at Microsoft, we focus on innovation, AI, and the cloud at one of our biggest events of the year: the Microsoft Ignite conference. It is free to join online from anywhere November 15 and 16, 2023, so anyone can learn about how Microsoft is innovating in ways that will impact teaching, learning, and the future of work. This year, a large focus of Ignite will be how Microsoft Azure brings your data together securely and privately to analyze your information and leverage other applications to provide enhanced learning, collaboration, and security. With secure access to your data on prem, in the cloud, or in a hybrid implementation, utilizing innovative education solutions with embedded AI and harnessing analytics in your career and technical education (CTE) classroom becomes easier than ever before. 

Empowering educators with the latest cloud services and AI tools

Tools like Azure OpenAI Service, Bing Chat, and Bing Chat Enterprise for faculty (now available in paid academic plans) can save you time and personalize learning experiences by leveraging the power of large language models with enhanced cloud security. Since Ignite is free to attend virtually, you and other members of your IT or instructional team can join to learn more at sessions such as: 

• The Future of Security with AI 
• Maximizing Microsoft Teams for Learning 
• AI transformations with the Microsoft Cloud 
• Making End to End Security Real 
• Inside Microsoft’s AI Innovations 
• Implement a Generative AI Solution with Azure OpenAI Service 
• Q&A for exploring AI-powered chat – let’s talk Bing Chat Enterprise 
• Visual Content Creation for Everyone: Clipchamp and Designer 
• Empowering Inclusive Innovation with Azure AI Studio Q&A
• Boost Productivity with Bing Chat Enterprise and Edge for Business 

Register for Microsoft Ignite to take part in the experience!

Leveraging cloud services and Microsoft AI tools on your CTE classroom experience

Microsoft is committed to transforming education through the use of innovative developments such as AI. Our cloud services securely gather and analyze data, embedding it into AI-powered applications to enhance learning, collaboration, productivity, and security. This is a key point. To truly get the benefits of many of our developments with AI, you need to have your data in the cloud, not locked away in an out-of-date on-prem server or data warehouse. This requirement is just as important for CTE classrooms and programs as it is for entire school districts. 

When considering the integration of cloud services and Microsoft AI tools into your CTE classroom experience, it’s essential to understand how to utilize these tools to enhance student career and technical skills. Microsoft takes some of the pressure off you when it comes to managing security to safeguard your data and student information. This delegation of certain security responsibilities not only frees up your resources for other essential classroom activities that utilize the power of responsible AI, but also leverages the inherent security features of the cloud to bolster your overall security stance.

Explore how to use Microsoft AI tools to enhance your CTE classroom experience.

If you want to learn more about how to support teaching and learning in your classroom using Microsoft’s cloud services and AI tools check out these solutions:

• Generate instant learning and visual engagement: Get information to help answer to student questions and support learning with visual aids with Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise. These tools give you access to AI-powered web chat (with added commercial data protection in Bing Chat Enterprise) that is grounded in data from the public web and provides complete, verifiable answers, along with visual responses that include graphs and charts. Use Bing Chat Enterprise with confidence knowing that Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) ensures secure access to Bing Chat Enterprise, protecting your user data and preserving chat privacy. Consider using these tools to quickly get responses with links to content sources during collaborative class discussions to dig deeper or generate visuals to explain complex concepts to students with Bing Image Creator.
• Elevate educational resources: Gather ideas and learning recommendations by incorporating tools that leverage the latest models from OpenAI. Microsoft Copilot in Windows 11, Bing and Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft 365 allows you to incorporate your own organization’s data. You can also integrate Azure OpenAI Service into your applications to ensure that staff have what they need tailored to your organization’s goals and their students’ data. For instance, you can personalize supplementary materials based on each student’s learning needs and interests or streamline tasks like writing engaging lessons or drafting assessments using standards and objectives that are tailored to your district and/or curricula. 
• Customize learning solutions: For educational systems that want to harness the power of AI by building their own tools and services, Azure OpenAI Service offers a way to harness the scale and security of Azure with OpenAI’s generative AI model capabilities. Using this service, your staff will receive more detailed information when you build an application that is sourced from data you add and manage using a no-code approach. Plus, Microsoft offers the ability to detect and mitigate harmful use with built-in responsible AI and enterprise-grade security. For example, if you’re looking for ways to simulate CTE programs that involve potentially hazardous activities, you can create a chatbot using the chat playground in Azure OpenAI Studio that allows students to practice specific safety protocols and emergency procedures in a controlled virtual environment. You could also track the career progress of your program’s alumni by collecting their trajectories and success stories to showcase program outcomes and refine your curricula to align with industry standards. 
• Open creative career pathways: Tap into the power of creative tools like Microsoft Designer, Bing Image Creator, Clipchamp, and Paint, all which are enhanced by generative AI. Designer produces an immediate visual draft of almost anything with a few simple prompts that can help learners brainstorm and iterate. These tools can provide you with innovative resources to engage students in career-specific design projects, multimedia assignments, and visual storytelling. 
• Enhance productivity:Power Platform enables you to create low-to-no-code apps and chatbots, with no formal coding experience needed, that are specific to your classroom and student needs. From tracking student submissions to auto-sending notifications and calendar events, the options are limitless. Solutions can be as simple as a flow that notifies an educator when a student completes an assessment or project, or when augmented by Azure’s AI capabilities, as advanced as an AI-infused chatbot that leverages Azure machine learning to create personalized career pathway guidance. Power BI also quickly visualizes key metrics and trends from across your institution, such as CTE program enrollment, budgets, job placement rates, student demographic information, and more. This helps provide predictive insights in accessible dashboards to inform instructional changes and program decision-making. 

Microsoft is leading the charge in bringing the power of cloud technology and AI to education. Our cloud services, particularly Microsoft Azure, are designed to enhance learning, collaboration, productivity, and security. Powerful, useful AI experiences come together in Microsoft solutions—simply, securely, and responsibly—into the products you use most. We invite you to join the Microsoft Ignite conference online for free from November 15 and 16, 2023, to discover cutting-edge AI tools like Azure OpenAI Service and Bing Chat Enterprise for faculty that can transform your educational institution. Embracing these innovations and exploring how they impact teaching and learning within your CTE program can help you revolutionize education.

Ready to take Microsoft cloud services and AI tools to the next level? Explore these resources to continue to innovate for education: 

• Support aspiring student developers in gaining skills to jump-start their careers. 
• Build your own chatbot with no coding required in Microsoft Power Platform. 
• Put your AI skills to the test by using these challenges to build innovative solutions. 

To help you make the most of these capabilities and build AI literacy, Microsoft offers free training on Microsoft Learn. Boost your confidence and explore the potential of AI in education: 

• Skill up with the latest in AI, Microsoft 365, Windows, and security in education 
• Empower educators to explore the potential of AI
• Enhance teaching and learning with Bing Chat

The post Microsoft Ignite: Bringing the innovations of the cloud to your CTE classroom appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

In 2023, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct two Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) studies that examine the potential security-related return on investment (ROI) that K-12 school systems and higher education institutions may realize by deploying Microsoft 365 Education A5. Prior to upgrading to A5, many of these institutions noted that limitations with their prior systems led to costly security-related events in terms of ransomware payments, recovery efforts, brand damage, and disruption to educational continuity.  

Upgrading to A5 resulted in decreased complexity and difficulty in responding to security threats and compliance requirements, the ability to meet cyber insurance requirements, and increased cost savings over time. 

The impact of Microsoft 365 Education A5 on K-12 schools 

For the purposes of the K-12 TEI study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the respondents and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a K-12 (primary and secondary education) school system with 60,000 students and 10,000 employees. 

We were able to cut our security license costs 25% by moving to A5. More important than saving money is that we now have better security and user experiences.

Chief Information Officer in a K-12 public school district

Within the composite K-12 organization, the study notes the following benefits of Microsoft 365 Education A5. 

• Improved security and compliance posture: The annual number of significant breaches that cross multiple systems and large portions of users is reduced by 15% for the composite organization, and the cost to remediate the remaining breaches is reduced by 29%. These savings include the actual remediation costs as well as fines and additive audit and compliance costs. Over three years, this is worth about $972,800 to the composite organization. 
• Security solution vendor consolidation reduces license costs by 30%: Consolidating from multiple vendors to Microsoft also reduces the total license/subscription and maintenance spend. The three-year value to the composite organization is $1.1 million. 
• Efficiencies in detection, remediation, and efficiency reduces future IT security team staff growth: Consolidating to Microsoft 365 Education A5 makes it possible to provide the composite organization with necessary improved protection and response to threats without growing the IT security team by the 50% it would need with the prior solutions. In doing so, the composite organization realizes about $545,700 in added labor savings over three years. This is an especially important benefit because of the difficulty the composite organization’s school system has with hiring, training, and/or retaining IT security professionals.  
• Improved security and using security features save employees fifteen minutes per week: After very conservatively reducing this benefit by 75% because not all time saved translates into additional work getting done, the three-year value to the composite organization is $1.7 million. 

The overall financial analysis, which is based on the interviews and survey, found that a composite K-12 organization experiences benefits of $4.22 million over three years versus costs of $1.94 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $2.28 million and an ROI of 118%. 

Executive summary data of the K-12 Forrester study “The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft 365 Education A5 Security For K-12 Schools.”

The impact of Microsoft 365 Education A5 on higher education institutions

For the purposes of the higher education TEI study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the respondents and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a higher ed organization with a teaching hospital, 50,000 students, and 15,000 employees. 

A big benefit is improved availability. A cloud-first approach means employees are not down as much because of technical or security issues.

A Vice President of technology and Chief Information Officer at a four-year university

Within the composite higher education organization, the study notes the following benefits of Microsoft 365 Education A5. 

• Improved security and compliance posture: The annual number of significant breaches that cross multiple systems and large portions of users is reduced by 15% for the composite organization, and the cost to remediate the remaining breaches is reduced by 29%. These savings include the actual remediation costs as well as fines and additive audit and compliance costs. Over three years, this is worth $1.2 million to the composite organization. 
• Security solution vendor consolidation reduces license costs by 30%: Consolidating from multiple vendors to Microsoft also reduces the total license/subscription and maintenance spend. The three-year value to the composite organization is $1.7 million. 
• Efficiencies in detection, remediation, and efficiency reduces future IT security team staff growth: Consolidating to Microsoft 365 Education A5 makes it possible to provide the composite organization with necessary improved protection and response to threats without growing the IT security team by the 40% it would need with the prior solutions. In doing so, the composite organization realizes about $1.1 million in added labor savings over three years. This is an especially important benefit because of the difficulty the higher education composite organization has with hiring, training, and/or retaining IT security professionals. 
• Improved security and using security features save employees fifteen minutes per week: After very conservatively reducing this benefit by 75% (because not all time saved translates into additional work getting done), the three-year value to the composite organization is $3.3 million. 

The financial analysis, which is based on the interviews and survey, found that a composite higher education organization experiences benefits of $7.28 million over three years versus costs of $3.19 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $4.09 million and an ROI of 128%. 

Executive summary data of the Higher Education Forrester study “The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft 365 Education A5 Security For Higher Education.”

Both studies recognize the unquantifiable benefits of Microsoft 365 Education A5 as well. A5 provides additional features, like Microsoft Teams Phone and Power BI, that support communication efforts and provide expanded data analytics. A5 also helps schools put in place insurance-mandated solutions faster and at less cost than many other alternatives, and it can help slow down the increases in policy premiums. Moreover, with the prevention of unexpected security issues, education institutions with Microsoft 365 Education A5 can focus on improving learning outcomes with a comprehensive learning environment that is safe, secure, and compliant for online and remote learning and digital collaboration.  

Learn more about how Microsoft 365 Education A5 can enhance privacy and security for your K-12 school system or higher education institution to accelerate teaching, learning, and working for students and staff. 

The post Enhancing school security and decreasing costs with Microsoft 365 Education A5 appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

To ensure Teams continues to meet the evolving requirements of educational institutions, here’s a quick look of what you can expect from new Teams:

• Higher overall performance with enhancements in core areas such as reliability, security, and IT management.
• Seamless collaboration across multiple organizations or accounts, ensuring no disruption to your workflow.
• More reliable, improved security and better manageability—using trusted types, stringent content security policies (CSP), and integration with MSIX (Windows app package format).

New Microsoft Teams for Education is now available on Windows and Mac desktop only. Availability for Edge and Chrome desktops will be announced later this year, and additional browser platform availability will be announced in early 2024.

For more details about new Teams, visit New Microsoft Teams is now generally available on windows and Mac.

Get started with new Teams today

Upgrading to new Teams is quick and seamless—no migration is required. You’ll be able to pick up where you left off after upgrading to new Teams. Along with our latest innovations in speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence in new Teams, almost all classic Teams features are already available as a part of the new Teams platform. We encourage you to upgrade to new Teams today.

To learn more about these features and how to opt-in to upgrade to new Teams, check out the new Teams microsite or refer to The new Microsoft Teams desktop client documentation on Microsoft Learn.

Upgrading to new Teams is quick and seamless—no migration is required.

Important Timelines

From January 2024 onwards, Microsoft will be setting “New Teams as default” for all Education users. Key dates include:

1. Early January 2024: For tenants and users still using classic Teams, Microsoft will set new Teams as the default Teams client. Administrators will still have the option to set classic Teams for their users via policy, should they choose to upgrade their users to new Teams on a different schedule.
2. March 2024: All new features and enhancements—and there will be quite a few lined up—will be available exclusively as a part of new Teams. To ensure our users can take advantage of the latest Teams innovation, all remaining classic Teams users will be automatically upgraded to new Teams after March 31, 2024.

We recommend that you upgrade your school to new Teams early in January 2024, as upgrading to new Teams is easy and seamless. Upgrading in early January will also ensure that there won’t be any disruption to your classes in the middle of the semester.

Microsoft will continue to share additional information and instructions as we approach these respective timelines. We’re committed to helping you create a more supportive, dynamic, and interactive learning experience for educators and students with Microsoft Teams for Education.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on October 5, 2023, and was updated on November 2, 2023 to include accurate dates under “Important Timelines.” 

The post New Microsoft Teams for Education is now available for Windows and Mac appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We need to be taking these cyber-attacks on schools as seriously as we do physical attacks on critical infrastructure. Schools are the infrastructure of learning in America.

World-class security and secure learning experiences are pillars that guide how Microsoft approaches cybersecurity in education. We recognize that cybersecurity is a top concern across this nation—from IT professionals who provide frontline support to technology decision makers that purchase services—and our solutions reflect both their needs as well as our expertise as a leading security company.

Microsoft cybersecurity solutions for schools are extensive, efficient, and customizable to the most demanding IT needs or federal requirements. The Microsoft 365 Education A5 plan is our most robust security package with unified tools that prevent and detect threats, safeguard data, and provide device management with security policy implementation.

When schools choose Microsoft 365 Education A5, they receive a Gartner-recognized security suite that replaces as many as 26 separate vendors—a budget-conscious savings that’s realized year after year.

Proactive steps to stay secure

The first few steps to keeping accounts and devices secure are simple and extremely effective. In just a few moments, you can help prevent identity attacks and harmful viruses.

Turn on Multifactor Authentication (MFA) for all staff and educators. Multifactor authentication provides an extra barrier and layer of security that makes it incredibly difficult for attackers to get past. Download Microsoft Authenticator for simple, fast, and highly secure two-factor authentication across your apps.

Use antivirus and antimalware protection. Malware attacks are rampant in education. Tools like Microsoft Defender help keep you and your schools’ devices safe from harm.

Regularly update your apps. Programs are constantly improving their resiliency to become more secure. Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge offer you the choice of when and how to get the latest updates to keep your devices running smoothly and securely. Additionally, Microsoft Intune for Education can be used to push updates in many cases.

Defend against threats

While large-scale, high-cost attacks are a concern, it’s equally crucial to address the ongoing threats that schools face, such as social engineering tactics that involve phishing messages and malware.

The Microsoft Defender family of products in the Microsoft 365 Education A5 plan is a suite of tools that detect, prevent, and remediate cyber-threats that impact schools. It includes:

• Microsoft 365 Defender: An extended detection and response (XDR) suite that helps secure endpoints and network devices, safeguard Office 365 products, and manage user access and identities. Defender prevents many types of cross-domain attacks while simultaneously allowing IT professionals to hunt down emerging threats. See how Microsoft 365 Defender is a complete XDR solution for schools.
• Microsoft 365 Defender for Cloud: An XDR tool in the Defender suite that manages, prioritizes, and remediates critical risks in cloud-based platforms. Built-in workflows and unified dashboards allow security teams to efficiently maintain multi-cloud or hybrid environments from day one all the way to the present. Learn how Defender for the Cloud protects digitally connected school environments.
• The Defender family of products also includes Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity.

Dr. Emily Bell, Chief Information Officer for Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, GA, uses the Defender suite to protect the 10,000 employees and 95,000 students that learn in their schools. All the tools have helped her team create a cybersecurity posture that’s ready to address whatever cyber-threats might emerge.

Cyber-incidents happen every day, all day. Our tools and our threat hunters set out to contain and eradicate them. As IT leaders, we’re used to just resolving problems before end users even know about them.

Dr. Emily Bell, CIO, Fulton County Schools

Keep student data safe

Schools store huge amounts of sensitive data across systems which means that knowing where data lives, how it’s used and accessed, and what to do to comply with laws are essential understandings for every IT administrator.

Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive governance, protection, and compliance solution that secures school data. Purview provides complete data visibility across platforms, apps, and clouds while offering unparalleled protection—even if data lives on non-Microsoft systems. It features tools like eDiscovery and Insider Risk Management for auditing, investigating, and acting on events that pose risks to school data as well as policy management for establishing secure computing environments.

Microsoft Purview’s Data Loss Prevention generates alerts with rich details for taking informed, corrective actions.

Purview also includes Data Loss Prevention which gives schools intelligent control over sensitive information across Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams for Education, or endpoint devices. Data Loss Prevention alerts IT departments when it recognizes risky activities and then automatically protects data through Adaptive Protection policies that dynamically mitigate security incidents. The insights from machine learning analysis save time so that IT teams can focus on other critical needs.

Adaptive Protection in Microsoft Purview dynamically applies policies to prevent data loss from risky activities, suspect files, and events.

Learn how to safeguard data across platforms, apps, and clouds and improve risk and compliance posture with Microsoft Purview.

Simplify device management and deployment

More schools are adopting 1:1 computing programs so that students of all ages have direct access to devices while learning. The large influx of new devices and ongoing refresh cycles require IT departments to efficiently configure, maintain, and secure each new addition to a school’s ecosystem.

Microsoft Intune for Education simplifies deployment and security for all types of devices—even non-Windows operating systems like MacOS and iOS. Intune uses a web-based dashboard that streamlines initial configuration and allows you to remotely set up, manage, and assist students and teachers with their devices. Security is a cornerstone of Intune for Education; IT professionals can apply security policies to protect users, update policies when necessary, and schedule automatic updates when the school day ends or learning stops. Get started now on moving your school to a cloud-based solution.

School Data Sync is a tool that securely connects data from school information systems (SIS) to Microsoft 365 and other applications. It enables easy rostering and flexible integration through the OneRoster® API or CSV files for a worry-free set up experience with apps like Microsoft Teams for Education and Intune for Education. School Data Sync also enables single sign-on (SSO) options for a more secure sign-in experience.

Districts like St. Lucie Public Schools use Microsoft solutions to handle their 1:1 computing program and ensure security measures are in place before devices reach students.

The cloud-based solution allows us to support cybersecurity from afar. Even while we are inside our district office, we can push out things like virus definitions to home networks to make sure that students’ data are safe.

Terence O’Leary, Chief Operating Officer for St. Lucie Public Schools

Take time to explore all the security options that are available in the Microsoft 365 Education A5 plan and learn how Microsoft Education can help you accelerate learning in a safe, secure school environment. Together, we can build a resilient defense against cyber-threats and foster an environment where everyone’s learning can flourish.

The post Ensuring secure, safe experiences for every school appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Today, we’re excited to share two ways we’re enhancing search experiences in education to help provide access to better answers, unlock creativity, and save time. Bing Chat Enterprise is now available in preview for Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 faculty users at no additional cost. And at a time when information literacy is more important than ever, we’re pleased to announce the general availability of our newest Learning Accelerator, Search Progress.

Leverage AI-powered chat with commercial data protection

Since Bing Chat Enterprise was launched in preview at Microsoft Inspire last month, we’ve heard from many of you who want to use it for your work as an education professional. We know generative AI has the potential to help educators, staff, and researchers alike to rediscover the joy of work by alleviating administrative burdens and reclaiming time and energy to focus on what matters most in and outside the classroom. But we also know that to do that, you need to be assured your data will remain protected.

Bing Chat Enterprise gives your organization AI-powered chat with commercial data protection. What goes in—and comes out—remains protected. This means user and chat data will not leak outside the organization, chat data is not saved, Microsoft has no eye-on access to it, and chat data is not used to train our underlying models.  

Like Bing Chat, Bing Chat Enterprise is grounded in web data and provides complete answers with links to content sources, along with visual answers that include graphs, charts and images, and is designed in line with our AI principles.

Once Bing Chat Enterprise is enabled, faculty can access it from Bing.com/chat or the Microsoft Edge sidebar when signed in with a Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory).

If you’re an IT admin licensed for Microsoft 365 A3 or A5 and you want to enable or opt out of Bing Chat Enterprise for your faculty, you can review the documentation to manage Bing Chat Enterprise. Once enabled, faculty can access it from bing.com/chat or the Microsoft Edge sidebar when signed in with their work account. Unless you opt out, Microsoft will enable Bing Chat Enterprise by default for eligible users no earlier than September 21st.  

We look forward to hearing about how you’ll use it. You can ask Bing Chat Enterprise to help:

• Draft content: “Create lesson plans on the Kinematics unit for my AP Physics class. Include the relevant learning objectives, materials, and activities”
• Personalize learning: “Generate a reading passage sample for my 3rd grade class about the ocean, include three versions for Lexile levels 420L to 650L, 520L to 820L, 740L to 940L”
• Brainstorm: “List 20 unique project ideas for my secondary school European history class”
• Summarize a PDF open in Edge: “Recap the findings of this flipped classroom research paper and list three recommendations and three challenges”
• Improve efficiency: “Act as an elementary school schedule design expert, review the schedule to identify problems and suggest changes that provide additional planning time for educators”

You can find even more applications and tips in the Microsoft Learn module Empower educators to explore the potential of artificial intelligence.

Bing Chat Enterprise is not available for students, they will continue to be able to access Bing Chat with a Microsoft account. We’re continuing to listen to feedback and work with the education community. If you have more questions about Bing Chat Enterprise, visit our Tech Community Blog.

Develop lifelong information literacy skills with Search Progress

Information literacy is critical, especially as the need for students to be able to evaluate content for credibility and potential fabrications grows in the era of AI. Search Progress, a new Learning Accelerator, allows educators to create, customize, and assign research projects where learners use Search Coach in a structured environment to gather sources and reflect on selections to help students gain lifelong information literacy skills. Search Progress is built into Teams Assignments and is now available to all Teams for Education customers.

Search Progress offers many benefits for both educators and students. For educators, Search Progress allows you to get a view of your student’s thinking in the research process. The final assignment will provide you visibility into a search-by-search breakdown of your student’s search habits and the queries used.

Students can practice information literacy skills in Search Progress with built-in features that help them improve how they gather and evaluate sources.

For students, Search Progress helps build information literacy skills by offering simple and authentic ways to find, curate, and reflect on sources throughout the research process. Your students are empowered to practice information literacy skills with built-in features that help them improve and reflect on how they gather and evaluate sources. To help students learn about credibility, sites that frequently post news have NewsGuard ratings that evaluate their adherence to journalistic standards.

Like all Learning Accelerators, Search Progress will offer educators a wide range of actionable student- and class-level data with Education Insights. With this, it becomes much more straightforward for you to identify which of your students are ahead, which are on track, and which will need more assistance. You can also use Insights to have deeper conversations with your students about their specific search habits, and to better tune future assignments to the needs of your class.

Search Progress will offer educators a wide range of actionable student- and class-level data with Education Insights.

Search Progress gives you and your students support throughout the entirety of a research assignment, helping learners of all ages gain lifelong information literacy skills. Start adding Search Progress to your assignments today to teach information literacy to your students.

• Visit Introducing Search Progress: A new way to assign and track research projects in Microsoft Teams.
• Download the Search Progress one-pager.
• Take the free Microsoft Learn module Develop search strategies with Search Coach and Search Progress.

As information literacy skills and innovations in AI become a bigger part of learning and education, we know it’s important for you and your students to have the right tools to succeed. We’re excited to be able to offer a range of tools in this space for educational institutions that now includes Bing Chat, Bing Chat Enterprise, Search Coach and Search Progress, and Azure OpenAI on your data for when tailored solutions are needed.

The post Announcing Bing Chat Enterprise for faculty and Search Progress appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Schools need secure video distribution solutions that maintain student privacy and prevent unauthorized sharing in order to capitalize on video’s engaging qualities. Educators also need video features that enhance learning and make content more accessible. Analysis from Security Solution Guide: Maximizing Private Video Servers in K-12 Education found that Microsoft Stream provides greater security and more resources than competing video sharing services.

Microsoft Stream is the ideal choice for schools who value security and want feature-rich, convenient video distribution solutions.

Store and share video from a familiar environment

Microsoft Stream is an intelligent enterprise video platform that’s available in all Microsoft 365 Education plans. Stream offers the features that people expect from a video server. It’s easy to play a video, skip around, and adjust the playback speed. Saving is even simpler because of Stream’s integration within Microsoft 365: Just upload a video file to Teams, OneDrive, or SharePoint and the file is ready to be securely shared or embedded from the Stream start page.

The Stream start page with recommended videos at the top of the screen and a list of videos and browsing filters at the bottom. The left menu shows Microsoft 365 applications including the Stream icon.

Stream sits alongside applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook in the Apps dashboard–an intentional placement that makes Stream’s private video server capabilities an integral part of whatever lesson, project, or activity might be happening. Instead of being a siloed solution that is separate from other tools, Stream lives where schools work and learn already–right next to Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets.

Using Microsoft Stream for secure video sharing in the classroom saves planning time for educators because they don’t have to switch back-and-forth between a video hosting service and the applications where the video is displayed. Plus, storage amounts vary according to each Microsoft 365 Education plan which often means schools have more space to save videos than they realize.

Access that is secure by design

The Sharing Settings dashboard showing options for sharing, permissions, expiration date, password authentication, and downloading.

Bad actors target schools because they have vulnerabilities that are easily exploited. Microsoft Stream delivers advanced cybersecurity protection for all types of videos including those with personally identifiable information (PII).

Stream coupled with Microsoft 365 security solutions enable IT administrators to:

• Apply permission settings so that Stream content is only available within a school as a private intranet or completely open to worldwide audiences.
• Control access so that groups like families can view selected videos but only students and educators can upload.
• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for enhanced password protection.
• Password-protect individual videos.
• Run Microsoft Search, Intelligence, file life cycle, and information governance processes on videos.

Dan Collins, IT Director at Newington College K-12 day and boarding school in Australia, uses the security services in the Microsoft 365 Education A5 plan to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing content found in files like videos.

All staff at Newington College do their best to train on and understand the technology used, but the objective of the IT team has been to reduce the potential threats to make training meaningful and not onerous, so that teachers can focus on what they love and serve their students effectively.

Faced with the threat of data leaks, schools that implement measures like MFA and identity protection are less likely to disclose sensitive data breaches because it is more difficult to circumvent security defenses. Tight control also helps schools like Newington College comply with cybersecurity insurance requirements and recommendations from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Video features that increase learning, enhance teaching, and extend communication

A collage of images that show recording options in Stream, a computer screen with a time stamp and the words, “Another décor idea,” and a webcam display with a woman smiling.

Microsoft Stream is not just a secure video distribution solution that conveniently stores files . It also helps educators instruct in ways that’s difficult to do with other online video services. Stream makes it simple to do things like:

• Securely share videos with small groups of students, classes, PLC groups, or families outside of school.
• Optimize videos for students who use mobile devices and those who watch from computers;
• Record your webcam or capture what’s happening on a computer screen (screencast) to explain or reflect on taught content.
• Monitor whether or not specific students watched a video and for how long.
• Provide automatic assistive tools like written transcripts and closed captioning to all viewers.
• Create and share live Teams recordings for students who might be absent from class or educators who miss a faculty meeting.

Stephanie Ruggerio, a math teacher at Porter Ridge High School, used Teams and Microsoft Stream to share in-class experiences with students who were isolated at home during the pandemic. Seeing what was happening with their friends on a video screen increased a sense of participation and allowed at-home students to hear questions and discussions.

It’s not the ‘cut-and-dried’ experience of watching a video about solving a problem. They recognize the other students on camera; they know me. Even at 2:00 AM, they can feel like they’re part of the class.

Stream also gave Stephanie new ways to make the experience more accessible.

I turn on closed captioning for my English language learner students and others who have hearing issues. They can follow everything that way.

Experience the benefits of a secure video distribution platform that provides all the essential features that teachers and students need for classroom learning.

Begin your Microsoft Stream journey today:

• Overview of Microsoft Stream
• How Microsoft 365 Education plans make schools more secure

The post How to use Microsoft Stream for secure video sharing in the classroom appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

The potential for AI to extend and scale the work of educators is encouraging. We find ourselves accelerated into a digitally transformed world of education, riding on a pandemic-fueled evolution of innovation. When thoughtfully leveraged, this places AI in a unique and powerful position to help us address challenges we face around ensuring equitable access to education.”

Dr. Jose L. Dotres, Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools 

At Microsoft Education, we are focused on three critical areas: empowering our customers to bring their visions to life, enhancing the value we can provide through Microsoft products, and deeply partnering with the education community to responsibly solve some of the most pressing challenges.

Empowering schools around the world

Education organizations are dreaming up ways to responsibly integrate AI tools into teaching and learning and finding that many of these dreams are quickly becoming reality. For example, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education set out to evaluate the impact of AI and quickly identified opportunities for integration within their education system. We are excited to partner with them to develop their virtual learning assistants through Azure OpenAI Service, and assist them in their efforts to equip students with the necessary skills to utilize AI in their academic and professional careers.

The future holds numerous opportunities and challenges, and as a Ministry of Education, we are keen to benefit from the opportunities and confront any challenges. We believe that integrating AI within our educational system and harnessing modern and cutting-edge technologies is key to improving the quality of education and equipping our future leaders with the skills they need to flourish in an ever-evolving world. Our partnership with Microsoft to build an AI tutor is another step in our ongoing efforts to enhance the learning experience of our students. We will continue working shoulder to shoulder with our partners to contribute to driving the future of education.”

United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education

It is inspiring to enable schools, our partners, and education technology providers to maximize the transformative potential of AI in a variety of ways, such as developing new learning tools, providing an aid for creating content, building AI literacy, improving student services, simplifying scheduling, and more.

Enhancing Microsoft products

At our Reimagine Education event last month, we shared examples of schools that are leveraging Learning Accelerators to improve learning outcomes and save classroom time. Since then, we have been hard at work across the company to reinvent the tools people use every day. We’ve been thrilled to share the new Bing and Edge, Copilot in Power Platform, and a whole new way to work with Microsoft 365 Copilot. These launches have the potential to redefine the way technology can support us in work, life, and learning.

Today we are sharing a preview of passage generation, one of the many ways we plan to support educators by embedding AI technology into our products. Within Reading Progress, passage generation reviews data from Education Insights to help create personalized reading passages based on words or phonics rules a class or specific student found most challenging. Educators can customize the passage by selecting suggested practice words, generating options, and then publishing their passage as a new reading assignment.

Passage generation leverages the power of Azure OpenAI, including enterprise-grade security and built-in tools to detect and mitigate harmful use, plus an additional set of platform innovations to support responsible usage in education. Passage generation is in an initial private preview and will continue to be refined as we learn from and build with our testing community. Community feedback will only become more important as we consider future opportunities for AI-powered features across our products.

Working together responsibly

Our advancements in AI are grounded in our company mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more and guided by our approach to responsible AI. The Microsoft AI principles of fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, accountability, and transparency are applied to the needs of education institutions, and products are designed in collaboration with industry experts. Further, new innovations are built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. We will share more information with IT teams as previews expand more broadly so that they can plan with confidence and enable features when it is right for their organization. 

The potential applications of AI in education are tremendous. This makes it even more important to ensure that users, from education leaders to individual learners, have the resources to be able to effectively use new AI tools. To this end, we will continue to share relevant learning paths and create new modules to support the ever-increasing importance of digital literacy.

We recognize that AI technology will keep evolving, and that this is only the start of a journey that will require ongoing engagement with leaders, educators, staff, students, and their families. We look forward to continuing to listen, learn, and innovate alongside educational organizations to make the promise of AI a reality. Read Microsoft’s approach to AI to learn more and stay tuned for future updates.

The post Exploring new opportunities with AI in education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Explore 10 Microsoft 365 A5 tools and features that can help secure your district and keep it protected.

1. Detect advanced threats with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

When vulnerabilities are identified and pursued before they become a threat, student learning can remain uninterrupted, and all facets of an institution can continue to operate. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a security platform designed to protect enterprise networks from advanced threats using a combination of technology built into Windows 11 and Microsoft’s cloud service. It uses endpoint behavioral sensors, cloud security analytics, and threat intelligence to detect and respond to advanced threats.

2. Prevent phishing attacks with Microsoft Defender

Phishing attacks can happen to anyone within a school or district. Microsoft 365 Defender provides multi-tiered phishing prevention that helps protect users from increasingly complex phishing attacks. Within Defender, default settings protect users from the start and IT staff can fine tune settings such as Spoof, Impersonation, and Advanced Phishing Thresholds. Schools can also refine and improve their protection through simulating attacks on individuals or groups within Active Directory or through Breach and Attack Simulation.

Configure Anti-Phishing settings

3. Protect users from malware with Microsoft Defender

Malware is a huge concern for schools. In fact, over 80% of reported malware attacks in the past 30 days occurred in education. Microsoft Defender contains a security feature that helps schools protect against malware, including viruses, ransomware, and spyware. It runs continuously in real-time to monitor for malicious activity and performs daily scans to check for any threats that may have slipped through. If Microsoft Defender detects something suspicious, it will try to block it and alert the user. Users can also manually initiate a scan for malware at any time from the Microsoft Defender dashboard.

Configure Anti-malware settings

4. Address risks with Microsoft Purview

Whether threats are intentional or inadvertent, it’s vital for schools to utilize every tool and resource available to identify potential risks and close gaps before a breach occurs. Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management helps organizations identify and address potentially risky activity by leveraging a range of service and third-party indicators. It uses logs from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Graph to define policies for identifying risk indicators. It also provides the ability to take action to mitigate identified risks, open investigation cases, and take legal action if necessary, using eDiscovery (Premium). This tool helps schools respond to legal matters or internal investigations by identifying and collecting relevant data from the Microsoft 365 platform.

5. Manage mobile and laptop devices with Intune for Education

Intune for Education is the Microsoft 365 A5 solution for device management. In an era of Zero Trust security models, schools that reduce the number of external tools and apps students and staff use help eliminate potential insecurities and breach points. Intune for Education provides IT staff with a single platform that can manage a mix of laptops, tablets, and smartphones in multiple operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, iOS, Linux, or ChromeOS.

Manage your endpoint devices

IT administrators can distribute apps to students and educators without physically handling their devices. These apps become available to users the next time they log in and follow them to any device. This ensures students only have access to the instructional apps they need for learning.

Manage your endpoint apps

6. Follow legal guidelines with Compliance Manager

Compliance and security go together. By understanding and following compliance requirements, schools can better protect students and secure sensitive information. Compliance Manager in Microsoft 365 A5 provides each school with a compliance score that helps IT staff better understand their compliance posture. Schools have access to over 200 easy to use templates that simplify compliance for policies like FERPA and COPPA.

7. Archive communication with Litigation hold

With the number of users and sensitive data that schools support, there is a high chance of needing access to past email for a variety of legal purposes. Litigation hold allows IT administrators to retain all mailbox content, including deleted items and original versions of modified items, in a user’s primary and archive mailboxes. IT staff can specify a hold duration for the retention of deleted and modified items or retain the content indefinitely until the hold is removed. When a Litigation hold is placed on a mailbox, deleted items and modified items are retained in the user’s Recoverable Items folder for the duration of the hold. Additionally, the storage quota for the Recoverable Items folder is increased from 30 GB to 110 GB.

8. Encrypt email with Microsoft Outlook

Email is a common target for school cybersecurity attacks. In 2019, Microsoft blocked 13 billion malicious or suspicious emails. Microsoft Outlook’s protection extends to other facets of email, too, including encryption. Encrypting an email message in Microsoft Outlook converts it from readable plain text into scrambled cipher text that can only be read by someone with the private key that matches the public key used to encrypt the message. Outlook offers two encryption options: S/MIME encryption, which requires a mail application that supports the S/MIME standard, and Microsoft 365 Message Encryption (Information Rights Management). Any recipient without the corresponding private key will not be able to read the encrypted message. Through encryption, schools can keep sensitive data, such as student information, secure while still being able to share with the appropriate staff members or caregivers.

9. Save videos to a private server with Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream is a video server platform that helps keep content secure. The platform simplifies the process of recording Teams meetings and sharing with a group, whether that’s a class of students or one for faculty and staff members. Videos are automatically saved in OneDrive and can be shared directly within a Teams for Education class or through the share settings. By keeping files in an internal, managed setting, districts can avoid uploading videos to a public-facing video hosting platform and eliminate the need to pay for a separate district video server.

10. Protect files with Microsoft Defender Safe Documents

Students, teachers, administrators, and caregivers are constantly sending and sharing a variety of files and documents. Because of this, a single corrupted file could easily be opened and cause potential harm. Institutions that use Safe Documents can view potentially malicious files in protected view without the risk of infection. This grants users protection from harmful documents while still being able view the content. Safe Documents scans Office documents in Protected View or Application Guard for Office using the cloud backend of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Users can access Safe Documents protection without needing to have Defender for Endpoint installed on their local devices.

Meeting schools’ unique security needs

Microsoft 365 A5 security tools help protect educational institutions from various cybersecurity threats. It includes advanced threat protection through tools like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, mobile device management with Intune for Education, and phishing prevention with Microsoft 365 Defender. By implementing this comprehensive security solution, districts can better secure their schools and protect themselves from evolving risks.

Explore Microsoft A5 security tools to learn more about protecting against cybersecurity threats.

• Getting started with anti-malware in Microsoft Defender
• Easily manage devices with Microsoft Intune for Education
• Securely manage videos with Stream (on SharePoint)  

The post Protect against cybersecurity risks with Microsoft 365 A5 security appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Connect with families inside Teams

Microsoft Teams for Education is a powerful platform that can help educators include families in their students’ academic success. A study in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness found that frequent educator-family communication of sixth and ninth grade students immediately increased student engagement as measured by homework completion rates, on-task behavior, and class participation. Consistent support and guidance at school and home can help students understand expectations and excel in their learning.

One of the key features of Teams for Education is the ability to bring together students, educators, and families to support the student’s educational journey. Teams provides a central hub for communication and collaboration and can help foster a sense of partnership and cooperation between families and the school community.

Parent Connection is an app in Teams for Education that helps educators securely connect and directly engage with the families of the students in their classes without leaving the Teams app. After a school’s IT enables the Parent Connection app, educators see a new Parents tab within each class. Then, when they want to start a chat with a family member, they can instantly see the contact information for that caregiver and a button that opens a chat conversation with them.

Families and caregivers receive an invitation via the email on file with School Data Sync so it is always up to date. The message will invite the caregiver to join the Teams chat. If they have yet to use Teams chat, the email will walk them through a series of simple how to get started steps.

Create inclusive communities with all families

School communities consist of many diverse learners and their families, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing as well as English language learners. In both of those instances, it’s likely that families or caregivers may not speak or understand the primary language spoken in the classroom. Communicating with families of diverse backgrounds can present some challenges, but Microsoft solutions can support effective communication and build positive relationships between educators and families. 

Microsoft Translator allows educators to capture what they are saying or typing and have it seamlessly translated for families and caregivers. Educators can start a conversation in the Microsoft Translator app and share the conversation code with family members. In turn, parents and caregivers can talk or write back in their preferred language, which gets translated in real-time for the educator. Microsoft Translator can be used remotely or in person. Multiple parents or caregivers can join a conference, and each customize the experience in their own language, breaking down communication barriers and building meaningful connections.

Translator for PowerPoint is a built-in feature in PowerPoint that adds live subtitles to a presentation. This tool can be utilized during family nights, open houses, and conferences allowing each family to access captions in their primary language at the same time. Educators, staff, and families can ask questions, engage with the overall school community, and feel included in the conversation!

Overcoming barriers to school and family engagement

Barriers tend to hinder a family’s ability to actively participate in their student’s education. Fortunately, Microsoft Teams, the Parent Connection app, and Microsoft Translator app can help overcome these obstacles and make it easy for families to connect. These tools provide asynchronous and accessible opportunities for educators and families to actively and easily communicate with each other about a student’s needs. This active engagement sets students and their families up for success while fostering an inclusive community for all.

Explore these resources to learn more about communicating with families.

• How to set-up and get started using Parent Connection
• Step-by-step guide for families to connect with educators using Microsoft Teams
• Guide for using Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Translator for a parent conferences

The post Strengthening relationships between educators and families appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Fulton County Public Schools outside Atlanta, Georgia, is one example of a district that faces many of the same challenges as nearly every U.S. school system. The district is dedicated to making sure that students grow socially, emotionally, and academically in a safe and supportive environment. The concept of “school safety” has evolved significantly in the last several decades to include cybersecurity, ranging from policy compliance, privacy, and data protection from common cybersecurity threats like phishing attacks, malware, and untrustworthy links.

Something smells phishy

Phishing occurs when a site, communication app, or other platform tries to collect personal or private information for harmful reasons. Often, phishing attacks try to gather personal information like credit card details or login credentials. In a given month, Fulton County Schools faced 254,255 phishing attempts, and successfully blocked 89% of them using their Microsoft 365 A5 security subscription.

To help reduce the number of successful threats, work with students to look for these common phishing red flags:

• The message or subject has misspellings and errors
• The message uses an email address that mimics a teacher’s or administrator’s name
• The message contains links that do not go where expected
• The message appears to be from a school or staff member and conveys a threat or urgency or offers an unrealistic reward
• The message makes a request to supply private information

Our job is to protect student and staff data, no matter what because we have social security numbers, health data, and other sensitive data in our student information systems and enterprise resource planning system, we must have a robust information security system in place.

AJ Philips, Director of Instructional Technology, Prince William County Schools

As the Director of Information and Instructional Technology, AJ Philips helps keep the students in Prince William County Schools in Virginia safe from cybersecurity threats like phishing. His district uses Microsoft Defender for the Cloud Apps to protect and watch potential threats to the district’s 90,000 student devices. Defender’s comprehensive protection helps keep students safe when they are on-campus, at home, or even when visiting family around the world.

Take a tick before you click bad links

The shift to blended learning accelerated abruptly over the last few years. Unfortunately, many students’ digital skills and cyber hygiene are still catching up.

Students access content in multiple ways: through learning tools, communication apps, and search engines. Each of these platforms is a landing spot for hyperlinked text. Students need digital literacy skills to help them determine which links are safe, valuable, and reliable as they explore content. Help students improve their digital hygiene by modeling how to assess and verify links found in websites, search results, email, communication apps, and social media.

It’s important for students to understand that clicking a harmful link could lead to someone being able to access their device’s camera, spy on or crash the device, or steal private information. Harmful links can occur on many of the devices that students use on a regular basis in the classroom like cell phones, tablets, and laptops.

Something doesn’t ad up

While ads are not inherently good or bad, it’s important that students develop the ability to tell the difference between a legitimate advertisement and a potentially harmful one. Ads are commonly found in interstitial videos in digital games, promoted search results, and social media. Advertisements show up everywhere promising a flashier app or a healthier life, and they can sometimes be a gateway for malware or phishing attacks.

Remember, ads are not always bad. It’s important that students understand the signs of trustworthy ads from those that are suspicious or potentially harmful. Help students avoid harmful ads by discussing and modeling the following practices:

• Identify the advertisement. Labels or captions like #ad or “sponsored” could be good clues.
• Decide if the ad is relevant to a search query.
• Avoid links that ask for personal data or try to incite fear.

Responding when mistakes are made

Even with good digital skills and tools like Microsoft Defender for the Cloud monitoring security threats, mistakes still happen. It’s important for students to know how to respond when they see a questionable email, click on a harmful link, or visit a dangerous ad.

The first step is to tell a trusted adult what happened. Help students feel free from judgment or punishment. Use these messages and strategies to help when mistakes are made:

• Emphasize that there are no consequences for reporting. Asking for help will not be punished or reprimanded. Microsoft recommends a “no consequences self-reporting environment” when possible.
• Remind students if they mistakenly click on a bad link, their life isn’t over! They just need to tell an adult to get help
• Provide students access to school experts who have helpful tools to fix it.

Help students understand why cyber hygiene is important

Recent years have shown the importance of understanding how to behave safe online and that everyone has a role to play in cybersecurity. Because of that, Microsoft has created the Cybersecurity Awareness website, with consumable resources for organizations, consumers, and students to learn cybersecurity best practices and how to be cyber smart. In this hub, audiences will be able to find infographics, certifications, reports, events, trainings, scholarships, and more to stay connected with cybersecurity education opportunities.

As students continue to gain important digital skills, they will increase their understanding of the threats that commonly try to compromise schools, social media apps, and communication tools that they use every day. Explain to them the cause and effect so they can see how to avoid scams and compromises, and why keeping an eye out for these is important.

Begin your cybersecurity discussion with students using the Microsoft K-12 Cybersecurity Infographic and Conversation Guide:

The K-12 Cybersecurity Infographic provides simple examples of phishing links and scam ads and how to identify them.

The K-12 Cybersecurity Conversation Guide helps educators and caregivers discuss key topics with students on how to improve their cyber hygiene.

The post Keeping students safer with cybersecurity awareness appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.