Using weak passwords and managing multiple logins are big security threats and should be avoided by every educational institution.  To strengthen our software security at no additional cost and offer you greater convenience and flexibility, Swivl Teams now includes Single Sign-on (SSO) authentication.  It allows teachers, coaches, and students to use their institutional login and password to access their Swivl Team account. This is the most secure way to authenticate users and unlike some of our competitors, like Torsh, we don’t charge anything extra for this feature.  Therefore, we encourage all of our Swivl Team administrators to contact our support team (support@swivl.com) and start the process of enabling SSO on their accounts.  It requires minimal effort -- just connect us with the right IT person and we will take care of the rest.

The need for SSO was derived from requests of districts and universities for stronger password and authentication requirements.  We partnered with one of them to develop and test our SSO solution before releasing it to a broader set of users. Our goal is to eventually enable SSO for every Swivl Teams user.  We also want to work with IT directors to unite all of their Swivl users into a centralized team in order to improve district IT oversight and security management.

As a founder of Swivl I wear many hats -- one of them is Chief Security Officer (CSO).  What does a CSO do? I work with our team and customers to make sure that we deliver the safest and most secure software.  It requires regular reviews and improvements, adding new tools and processes to prevent unwanted attacks (e.g. penetration testing), and constantly sourcing  ways to improve our product. 

Because Swivl Teams is dedicated to protecting the content across 50,000 customer sites around the globe, early on we decided to make all security features standard for everyone.  We encrypt all stored video content and all transmission of data, and authenticate every user for private sharing. We selected Amazon’s AWS since it is one of the most secure and certified cloud platforms.  Learn more about our security here.

We will continue to look for ways to improve and look forward to working with all of you.

Effective September 27, 2019 we are removing the “Export to YouTube” feature from the Swivl Teams platform. This is a feature that was added early in our platform based on a few customer requests. But after a long internal discussion and with support from key customers, we have decided to remove it.

What motivated this decision was the recent announcement that YouTube knowingly violated COPPA law and although a $170 million FTC fine seems impressive, YouTube still brings in close to $15 billion in revenue annually. YouTube has promised to improve but they still largely focus on kid-created content and the changes they have identified are very narrowly defined. Given the intrinsic goals of the ad-driven platform like YouTube, it raises a concern for us that other violations are possible and probable. And today, we say: enough is enough.

We are all users of Google tools and many schools have adopted various Google platforms -- Chromebooks, GAFE, etc. GAFE was conceived to be safe for educational uses, but not all Google products are created equally. My co-founder, Brian, first alerted the education community about YouTube’s non-compliance back in 2015. In the past, some customers who purchased Swivl robots wanted to use YouTube for both student-facing as well as teacher-facing uses, but in every case we have strongly discouraged it and advocated for the use of an alternative education focused video platform, even if that meant choosing one of our education-focused competitors.

YouTube is laser focused on ad revenue and profits which threatens the safety of modern educational environments. Over the past few years, more and more school districts, states, and higher education institutions are placing a higher priority on the security of classroom generated videos. As a result, at Swivl, we have significantly strengthened our own security processes, protocols, and infrastructure to meet the growing stringent demands of our customers and continue to be dedicated to them.

We encourage all schools to abandon YouTube and consider other responsible video platforms (including Swivl Teams) that follow FERPA, COPPA, and other educational security and privacy standards.

I am a dad of two kids in middle school.  Every day they are exposed to new technological experiences, and every day I ask myself -- Am I doing everything I can to protect them?  I worry about their personal data use in school, what they have access to, and external influences.  I try to remind myself that when I was their age, it was easy to get access to anything and that at the end of the day I cannot isolate them from the world. So my wife and I focus on educating our kids on how to handle themselves, be good digital citizens, and carefully review and evaluate what happens to them in school.

Concerns about the privacy and security of students are not new to me.  As a founder of a startup that promotes use of video in classrooms for instructional coaching and teacher improvement, I have had hundreds of conversations with our customers about student privacy.  Our hardware and software helps capture video of not only the teacher, but also of their interactions with students, student work, and small group activities.  We believe that having a holistic view of the classroom can help teachers and coaches better collaborate, provide unique insights, and surface valuable “aha” moments.  Obviously a majority of the videos we help to capture and store do depict students.  Unsurprisingly, many teachers, administrators, and parents have concerns about the privacy and security of those videos.

The vast majority of schools and districts have found a way to use video observations in their schools.  Others have had more challenges and we've seen a wide variety of philosophies around the use of video in the classroom.  Some have even asked us if we can blur student faces to protect their identity.  Unfortunately, reliable technology for completely blurring the faces of specifically only students is still far from perfect.  More importantly, we believe that doing so would significantly undermine a video’s value since so much about human interactions is in the facial expressions.  How else could a coach see if students are engaged in a lesson?  How can you tell who is paying attention and who disengaged?  

Some districts forbid their schools from using cloud based services like Swivl.  This is extremely short-sighted as cloud based software offers significant cost, support, and upgradeability benefits.  Alternatives of storing video on outdated tech, like DVDs and hard-drives, pose much greater security risks.  It also makes the process of sharing so cumbersome that eventually teachers stop using video altogether.

Unfortunately other schools, especially in districts with strong parental voices, are trying to stop the use of recording video altogether.  This deprives teachers and administrators of one of the most innovative tool to disrupt education.  Research studies, specifically the ones conducted by the Gates Foundation and Harvard CEPR, have demonstrated again and again the benefits of self-reflection and video based feedback to teacher improvement.

So what are my recommendations when I speak with customers?

Just as when I’m speaking with my kids, its all starts with education.  If you are working with parents, it is important to explain the intent of these videos.  It’s not a tool to grade students; it’s is a tool to help teachers improve their skills.  Swivl is not a giant company whose goal is to mine data on your kids for advertising. In fact, we will never use videos for unintended purposes.  Next, it is important to discuss who can access the videos.  Swivl enables private sharing, so only the people who are meant to view a video can access it.   If an unintended person gets ahold of a video link they will not be able to view it unless they can prove they are the intended viewer.

When it comes to our platform, Swivl goes to great lengths to secure all videos when they are uploaded, stored, or played.  We are FERPA and COPPA compliant, have signed and fully support the Student Privacy Pledge, and invite you to read through our terms and privacy policy.  We always welcome a conversation so we can explain what we do and why we do it. We are happy to review and sign additional security and privacy contracts as required.  At the end of the day, the most important thing to me and Swivl, is to protect your kids like we protect our own.

If you need help with these questions in your school or district, please email vlad at swivl.com

Resources/Links

Swivl Security Overview

Swivl Terms and Conditions

Swivl Privacy Policy

Student Privacy Pledge