Cybersecurity in Education

Educational organizations are responsible for highly sensitive data like student records and faculty research. They must also facilitate student payments, issue ID cards, and maintain compliance with regulations like FERPA and PCI DSS.

Futurex provides hardware-based encryption solutions as a one-stop-shop for educational institutions, deployable on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution. Solutions incldue data encryption and tokenization, tamper-proof storage, encryption key management, digital signing and authentication, payments security, and ID card issuance.

Cybersecurity Challenges Facing Educational Institutions

Educational institutions have many cybersecurity responsibilities, such as protecting academic records, authenticating high-value faculty research, and maintaining security protocols across entire campuses or districts. As an added challenge, institutions must maintain FERPA or PCI DSS compliance while dealing with decentralized cryptographic infrastructures. Other challenges:

Protect student academic records
Sign and authenticate research data
Manage encryption keys and cybersecurity environments
Issue prepaid or student ID cards
Contend with decentralized IT infrastructure

Futurex Solutions for Educational Institutions

Futurex provides hardware security modules (HSMs) and key management servers with tamper-proof controls. You can deploy them on-premises, in the cloud, or both. Futurex HSMs encrypt, transmit, and store data by using advanced algorithms. Key management services establish a public key infrastructure (PKI) and a certificate authority (CA) for digital certificates and signing. Futurex provides the following solutions:

Vaultless tokenization to protect data
FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified HSMs for encryption and storage
Offline root CA for digital signing and authentication
Scalable enterprise key management
Centralized management with specialized modules

Vaultless Tokenization

Tokenization means replacing data with randomized strings during storage and transmission. Futurex goes one step further with vaultless tokenization, eliminating token storage databases, or vaults. This reduces PCI compliance scope and provides better security.

Learn about vaultless tokenization >

Certificate Authority

Using Futurex enterprise key management servers, educational organizations can establish a PKI to secure private keys and create a root certificate authority (CA). The offline root certificate establishes a working certificate that can digitally sign and authenticate academic data.

Learn about our Issuing CA >

Tokenization

Any depository of personal student information, such as academic records or personally identifiable information, has a high value on the black market. Futurex offers tokenization solutions that reduce risk while maintaining access for authorized users to keep this sensitive data secure. Rather than store important data in the clear, tokenization utilizes identifying text strings, or tokens, for storage. To retrieve stored data, send the relevant token to a hardware security module (HSM), which securely returns the requested data.

Digital Signing

Research requires large investments in time and resources to produce valuable findings, often at the expense of governmental agencies and other funding bodies. As a result, some individuals and organizations seek to complicate such investments by accessing and sometimes sabotaging the research of others. To ensure the authenticity of research, Futurex provides digital signing services through the KMES Series 3 or Excrypt Series, devices capable of providing asymmetric keys and certificates for document authentication.