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Bid Adieu to Vulnerabilities
e-Learning in K-12 education, college education, competitive or professional courses have many security challenges.There is a pressing need for solution providers to address these issues By Pragya Gupta, digital LEARNING Bureau
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-Learning has been realised as one of the biggest tools in the education reform strategies. ICT in education has taken various shapes with the changing time from one sided learning tool to social learning. Today’s Learning 2.0 is out of the conventional e-learning systems based on instructional packets using internet technologies, however, new e-learning emphasis on the use of social platforms like blog, wikis, podcasts and virtual worlds. It is becoming more and more popular as universities strive to cut costs and reach larger students who are adopting e-learning solutions. Considering the huge costs involved in creating and
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maintaining courses, security has not yet been considered as an important issue. With the increasing popularity and penetration of e-learning solutions, emerging security risks are making systems vulnerable. Protecting digital content from copying, printing and distribution should become an integral part of content generation, especially when relying on revenue generation for that work. Protection of both the information and the tools are of equal importance. There are number of issues that can create nuisance among practitioners like Secrecy which is one of the key issues. They need to be ensured that objects are strictly accessible to the authorised per-
son and the person they are not granted access to information must not see or modify data or programmes. New grade based examination system has given the need of non-repudiation. It is mandatory to keep track on whenever grades of students are changed and it must be possible to reliably trace who has performed the modification and also deny the person with unauthorised access. e-Learning in K-12 education, college education, competitive or professional courses have many security challenges and there is no single solution, which can address those challenges largely. Sharing solutions, Rana Gupta, Safenet says, “Earlier there were many touch points in education at the backend, inviting paper leaks and information leaks but now only authorised users have access to particular information and data modification. However, the management is important. There are rising threats related to IP, content and applications security for which we offer right management products called Safenet Right Management (SRM) products to manage rights for e-learning. It helps in encrypt the content which is accessible by those who have token to decrypt that can be in the shape of hardware, software or a combination. The youth today is very active on social networking as they use this platform to keep themselves abreast with information and stay in touch with friends, it thus opens up a good hunting ground for Cyber Criminals. According to the Amit Nath, Country Manager India and SAARC, Trend Micro, “Cyber criminals misuse the credibility and popularity of such sites for their own benefits. They could play with users’ personal information in order to commit ID theft. For example: recently, cyber criminals used Twitter as a technique to lure users into