LGPD in Education: what changes for your Educational Institution?
Any data related to an identified or identifiable individual that the education sector collects, stores, manipulates, or shares must comply with Law No. 13,709/2018 (“General Data Protection Law” or “LGPD”). The LGPD in education requires educational institutions to establish qualified protection for the various types of personal data of individuals, including financial information, payment details, student health data, and contact information for their employees. It provides a window of opportunity and a competitive advantage for educational institutions that comply with the law.
The LGPD has become the major milestone for the topic of “privacy and data protection” in Brazil since its entry into force. However, the topic is not new and has been gaining strength and consistency since the rise of the internet.
This is because digital transformation - also imbued with new business models - expanded the possibilities of misuse of personal and sensitive information, such as in fraud, scams of phishing, and identity theft.
In this context, the LGPD was created with the purpose of giving back to the owners (i.e., the people to whom the data refer and identify) control over their data and over what is done in relation to them. In addition, the LGPD established the responsibilities of companies, organizations, and public institutions that process such information - including educational institutions - for the proper use of this data.
It should be noted that personal data is a record, left voluntarily or not by a person, that can provide treatment agents with a better understanding of their business intelligence.
This data may be related, for example, to the performance of a given educational institution team, the interest and involvement of this institution's business partners, the list of its suppliers, shareholders, clients - parents, guardians and students - among others. Such data, when processed, allow the educational institution to make better business decisions and, for this reason, it is essential that the precautions imposed by the LGPD are always observed.
The impacts of the LGPD for the education sector
Adapting to the LGPD is not an easy task. The importance and volume of data are growing every day and the intensification of all this available information, especially through the use of new technologies in education, makes law enforcement quite challenging.
You may already be thinking about the large amount of data that is collected at your educational institution to offer an increasingly better experience to the student, their parents and guardians, as well as to carry out the analysis of metrics and marketing issues necessary for the evolution of your company.
Despite the challenge, carrying out a process of compliance with the LGPD is a unique opportunity for your institution to differentiate itself in the market, since an institution that respects the privacy and protection of personal data of its students, parents, employees, and legal representatives of suppliers strengthens consumer trust in its services. Encouraging a culture of personal data protection means, consequently, fostering a valuable asset that reinforces the power of your brand.
The first steps to comply with the LGPD: what, for what, how.
In general, you must establish governance for the personal data you handle at your educational institution, considering the different moments of this data: collection, aggregation, analysis, storage, sharing, elimination, etc. You can start, for example, by surveying who are the owners of the personal data you treat, such as, for example, personal data of your employees, students, parents or guardians, legal representatives of suppliers.
Next, it is important to map which processes use personal data. In other words, it is necessary to understand what personal data processing activities the educational institution carries out. Based on this mapping, the educational institution must understand its position as a treatment agent for each of the mapped activities.
The LGPD defines that treatment agents can be data controllers or operators, assigning different obligations and responsibilities to each one. In short, the controller is the one who defines basic aspects of the treatment: what personal data to use, for what purposes, etc. The operator, on the other hand, processes personal data as directed by the controller.
For activities in which the educational institution is the controller of personal data, it is essential to establish the purpose of that treatment and to ensure that this purpose is informed to the corresponding owners (through a privacy policy, for example).
In addition, it is necessary to define, for each treatment activity, a legal basis - that is, one of the legal hypotheses that authorize the processing of data under the LGPD. If an activity does not have a clear purpose, it is necessary to critically analyze whether the processing of personal data makes sense.
In this way, it is even possible to delete unused and unnecessary data that takes up space in clouds or other information storage systems.
Finally, it is necessary to establish processes to meet the rights of personal data holders, to rethink organizational controls (such as recording the mapping of personal data, defining access policies, rules for sharing personal data, etc.), as well as to review contractual models, correctly regulating the responsibilities and rights of the parties involved in the business.
Remember that all these areas of suitability are inseparable and the monitoring of an expert in privacy and personal data protection is essential. After all, it is possible for the educational institution to process personal data for multiple purposes and only an expert will be able to identify, for example, those that are collected from employees to comply with legal obligations, those that are accessed from students and clients for the execution of a contract, among others.
What about the personal data of minors? What about the health data?
It is worth saying that one of the great precautions of educational institutions must relate to the processing of personal data of children and adolescents. This is because the LGPD, reinforcing the Federal Constitution of 1988, which provides for respect for the best interests of children and adolescents, created specific rules for minors.
The purpose of the law was to reduce information asymmetries between owners and treatment agents, considering that children and adolescents have limitations to understand certain aspects related to the processing of their personal data.
For example, if the understanding is that a child cannot freely consent to their personal data being used for marketing activities, a parent or guardian may be required to provide this consent instead.
It is also common for educational institutions to have certain health information about students - whether they are minors or not. These are personal data considered sensitive by the LGPD and, as well as data of holders of children and adolescents, have specific rules that must be observed.
How Clicksign can assist in this process
As a service provider and provider of various educational institutions, as well as a platform that authenticates signers in electronic documents using personal data, Clicksign is an ally for compliance with the LGPD and can collaborate in complying with various principles of the law, especially transparency, accountability and accountability.
First of all, Clicksign's care regarding privacy and personal data protection is reflected in our Privacy Policy, which ensures that the owners always have information about how their personal data is treated.
The personal data processing activities carried out by Clicksign are transparent to the users of our services.
In addition, since it acts as an independent and impartial third party in the process of signing electronic contracts, Clicksign increases trust regarding the authenticity of the signers of a given document through multiple authentication points that it makes available to its clients, including educational institutions - such as e-mail, WhatsApp, pix, facial recognition, etc. These authentication points are easily viewed in the signature history contained in the last page of the document (“LOG”). This methodology aims to record all stages of the signers' signature in order to preserve the authenticity of the electronic document.
The integrity of the document is also guaranteed at Clicksign by an electronic lock (SHA-256 hash), which identifies that the document was not changed after signing and thus remains intact. The Clicksign method, in addition to increasing security in the electronic signature process, acts as an important guarantee that the electronic document generated by the parties constitutes adequate and reliable proof. This document, in turn, is shared only between the signatory parties chosen by the educational institution itself.
Finally, Clicksign made available for all plans, still in beta format, the registration tool for Account Audit for customers. Among its numerous features, it is possible that, in corporate accounts, such as those of schools, the client identifies what actions were taken within the platform, such as the cancellation and deletion of documents, changes in user permissions, and others. Incredible, isn't it? For more information, just click here.
Final Thoughts: How to Benefit from This Scenario
With the increase in the volume of personal data storage by educational institutions, the protection of personal data is becoming increasingly imperative, requiring better management and digital storage of information and highlighting the importance of companies adopting best practices in their business.
O Future of education involves the safeguarding of personal data of employees, customers, and suppliers of educational institutions. This conduct represents a competitive advantage in the market, reinforcing the good practices and ethics of the educational institution, encouraging the search for investors and transmitting the reliability that most clients seek.
Therefore, to keep your system protected, you need to obtain relevant and up-to-date tools to implement a strict policy in the lifecycle of your documents.
As Clicksign solutions can help you optimize processes and protect your educational institution's most valuable information through a cutting-edge, double-encrypted platform to allow you to assess the origin and integrity of your documents online.
Is your business ready for the LGPD in Education yet? That this content has brought insights valuable to your Educational Institution. And don't forget, to have access to posts like this, always follow the news here on the Clicksign blog.
Finally, if you also want to digitize your processes, as the leading companies in the market already do, Clicksign is the ideal solution to accelerate the growth of your business!
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