Carahsoft Technology is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®. Founded in 2004 and based in Reston, Virginia, the company works with a robust and growing ecosystem of reseller partners, system integrators, and manufacturers to proactively market, sell, and distribute emerging and leading IT solutions to government markets in the U.S. and Canada, as well as education, healthcare, and commercial markets.
Schools and universities strive every day to give their students an effective, fulfilling, successful personal growth and academic learning experience. Harnessing technology innovations can pave the way to achieving those goals. During Carahsoft’s annual EdTech Talks Summit, experts in education and the IT industry discussed how existing and emerging solutions such as observability, the ‘secure by design’ approach and analytics can enhance education to personalize experiences, provide developmental insights on learning approaches and achieve maximum support for all students. Through the OMNIA Partners and Carahsoft Public Sector contract, top-performing education contracts are designed specifically to address the flexibility necessary to deliver what schools need when they need it.
Addressing Post-Pandemic Digital Transformation with Observability
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many education challenges including a rapid shift to remote learning, the need to adapt quickly to new technologies and evolving cybersecurity threats. Schools and universities play a major role in the nation’s critical infrastructure along with the transportation sector, water and pipeline management, utilities and more making them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Bolstering the strength of cybersecurity infrastructure is a key component of the student experience as schools are responsible for safeguarding student’s educational, health and personal identification records.
One step towards achieving cybersecurity is observability. In a time when education leaders are asked to do more with less, observability allows institutions to understand what is happening within their networks and why. Observability should be used to empower education IT teams and in conjunction with active monitoring platforms, which will help them understand the full scope of the data in their network management systems to then apply actionable intelligence to solve issues. When exploring this data, IT staff should consider these questions:
- Is the network following the proper compliance rules that are in place? If not, what change was made to take the network out of compliance?
- What is the user experience like right now?
- What vulnerabilities are there within the network?
- Are students able to reliably access what they need and are those systems performing correctly?
- Are the internal safeguards working as efficiently as external safeguards?
- Do students have proper online safety awareness to aid in avoiding potential risks?
Implementing observability best practices can boost the security and manageability of schools’ network infrastructures, leading to improved experiences for students, faculty and cross-campus communities.
Secure by Design for Education
One of the leading ways manufacturers, developers and education institutions can ensure their products are safe and efficient for students and staff is to create and utilize products that are secure by design. This holistic approach establishes that each product code, solution bundle and packages is tested and validated before an end user receives them, and therefore, contains a built-in cybersecurity insurance policy. In the future, this will save schools time and costs by decreasing the number of cyber threats they face. Students and faculty will experience an increased learning capacity. For example, these solutions help keep students in schools and experiencing less interruption and downtime because of ransomware attacks. This approach empowers faculty to seamlessly integrate the use of secure solutions into their curriculum and lesson plans, ensuring protected data for educators and students.
The Importance of Analytics in Higher Education
Data plays a crucial role in educational buying needs, offering valuable insights into the ever-evolving trends in learning. Most schools have siloed data in multiple areas such as learning management systems, enrollment systems and alumni engagement systems. Some colleges and universities within the Public Sector are only able to perform localized, descriptive analytics such as running spreadsheets and creating dashboards to see enrollment and graduation rates. Through this partnership, our approach is designed to help schools reach their goals and maximize their procurement strategy. The key to valuable, actionable and intelligent analytics is being able to discern how data intersects and correlates for more predictive analytics across the various digital spaces where institution data is stored. Through this partnership, our approach is designed to help schools reach their goals and maximize their procurement strategy.
From increased security through observability and intentional technology designs to data-driven insights, the impact of these solutions on student growth is reshaping the educational landscape and creating an environment where students can thrive both academically and personally.
Read the original blog from Tim Boltz with Carahsoft HERE
Carahsoft & OMNIA Partners
Carahsoft and OMNIA Partners have created an extremely efficient purchasing channel for Public Sector agencies and organizations so that they can deploy solutions faster for quicker return on investment, all at discounted rates off MSRP. Carahsoft is driven to support Public Sector organizations and provide the solutions, services and expertise they need to ensure a smooth procurement process.