ManagedMethods Launches Google Meet & Chat Monitoring and Reporting to Protect K-12 School Districts From Remote Learning Cybersecurity & Student Safety Risks

BOULDER, Colo., May 5, 2020 (Newswire.com) - ManagedMethods, a leading Google G Suite and Microsoft 365 cybersecurity and student safety platform for K-12 school districts, today announced the addition of Google Meet and Chat monitoring and reporting to its platform. District IT teams face new security, safety, and compliance challenges due to increased remote learning and video conferencing in the classroom. ManagedMethods now gives districts full visibility and control into the activity taking place within Google Meet and Chat to address the unique challenges and needs that come with dispersed students and staff.

“The current circumstances due to COVID-19 have rapidly transformed K-12 education and brought with it new cybersecurity and student safety challenges. Schools are relying on Google Meet for video conferencing and Google Chat for communications,” said Charlie Sander, CEO of ManagedMethods. “Our new Google Meet and Chat monitoring functionality will give IT teams more insight into school meetings to better protect sensitive data, secure remote learning, keep meetings private and students safe.”

New remote learning environments have revealed the limited visibility and control districts previously had over cloud-based file sharing, email, and video conferencing to protect against student safety threats. Districts rely on ManagedMethods to protect their G Suite environments not only from cybersecurity risks, including phishing and malware, data loss, and account takeovers, but also to monitor for student safety signals. These safety concerns include cyberbullying, self-harm, threats of violence, discrimination, and domestic abuse that are found in text and image content.

Now, K-12 IT teams have one, easy-to-use platform where they can quickly identify these issues in their G Suite for Education environment, including Google Meet and Chat. ManagedMethods empowers IT administrators at schools to analyze:

• Meet Activity: Who attended a meeting, when each attendee joined and how long they were in a meeting, where they joined from, the device used, if screen sharing was enabled by an attendee, and for how long.
• Participants by Organizational Unit: Which meetings included a teacher or staff member, and which ones did not.
• Meeting Participants from Outside Domains: All meetings that included an attendee from outside the school domain.
• Analysis: Easily export Google Meet and Chat data to help build customized reports for analysis and support from district administrators.​
• Compliance: Identify student safety, data security, and privacy compliance issues happening in Chat that may violate FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA standards.

Districts are still responsible for complying with student data privacy regulations, including FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA when conducting remote learning. To do so, IT teams are challenged to secure video meetings from unauthorized access by a non-organizational account – including a parent or guardian account – while all school activity takes place outside the network perimeter.

With ManagedMethods, risks across G Suite for Education, now including Google Meet and Chat, are inside one dashboard. IT teams can easily monitor and audit student safety signals, student data privacy risks, and cybersecurity threats in one, easy-to-use platform. From any location, on any device.

“We consistently heard from our customers who have made the transition to remote learning that Google Meet and Chat use has rapidly increased, and they needed a tool to give them visibility and control into the activity taking place there,” said David Waugh, Chief Revenue Officer of ManagedMethods. “We’re proud to now offer current and future customers the same cybersecurity and student safety monitoring in Meet and Chat that they have for the entire G Suite. Protecting our customers, and their students and staff, is our top priority and these new features will help us achieve that mission.”

ManagedMethods will be hosting a webinar on May 14 at 11:30 a.m. MT to demonstrate its Google Meet and Chat monitoring and reporting capabilities for school districts. To learn more, please visit the ManagedMethods Google Meet & Chat Demo Webinar registration page.

For more information on ManagedMethods and its award-winning G Suite cybersecurity and student safety platform, please visit ManagedMethods.com.

​About ManagedMethods

ManagedMethods is the leading Google G Suite and Microsoft 365 cybersecurity, student safety, and compliance platform for K-12 school districts. The platform monitors district G Suite and Microsoft 365, including Gmail and Outlook 365, 24/7/365 and provides award-winning cloud security that empowers school districts with full visibility and control of the data being stored.

ManagedMethods makes G Suite and Microsoft 365 security easy — no proxy, no agent, no extension, and no special training needed. The platform helps school districts secure sensitive student, staff, and district data using machine learning-powered threat protection against malware and phishing schemes, and detects abnormal behavior to protect against account takeovers and the loss of sensitive data. It also monitors for student safety signals, such as cyberbullying, self-harm, racial and LGBTQ discrimination, threats of violence, and domestic abuse in both text and image content.

ManagedMethods is the K-12 education industry’s only G Suite and Microsoft 365 cybersecurity and student safety platform that can be deployed in minutes with no special training and zero impact on users or network speed. For more information, please visit ManagedMethods.com.

Source: ManagedMethods