Cyber Safety & Security for K-12 School Districts

Cloud Monitor is well worth the investment. It shows you what is going on and allows you to have a deeper understanding of how your users are using your accounts. Before Cloud Monitor, we knew things were going on but we didn’t know what and we didn’t know who. Now we do and we can put policies in place to automatically remediate the risks and make it into a teachable moment for the user. Both of which help make our district’s Google Workspace environment more secure.”

ManagedMethods’ quoting and onboarding process is easy and the training is good. Their staff don’t talk down to you just because you’re not a security expert. They understand the K-12 customer, how we work and what we need to monitor.”

When I first saw the Cloud Monitor demo, I realized it's everything I had at my previous district rolled into one. The visibility and control it would give me into Google Workspace was amazing, so I immediately said, 'I love it. Let's do what we have to do to get this kicked off.'"

Cloud Monitor is our forensic tool in Google Workspace. We get the alert from Gaggle, but ManagedMethods gives us the details we need to follow up quickly. And when student safety is at risk, time is critical.”

I had an incident where some students started compiling racially motivated memes on a Google Slides deck. Using Cloud Monitor, I was able to see which students had viewed and/or edited the deck and which did not. I then had data-driven proof to deal with the situation and help ensure our district remains in compliance with civil rights laws.”

When our Google Workspace for Education Plus cost increased, we simply couldn’t fit it in the budget and had to let go of the security and investigation tools we were used to. Luckily, we could work with ManagedMethods to ensure our data was still being protected. Using Cloud Monitor, we’ve been able to catch everything from Social Security Numbers being sent outside the domain to school accounts being used to access apps like OnlyFans and TikTok.”

The return on investment is huge. Most districts, ourselves included, don't have an enormous budget. What I love about Cloud Monitor is that not only is it affordable, but you get so much with it. You can really do a lot."

Google Admin Console isn’t very visible or intuitive. Even when we added the security investigations tool with Google Plus edition, it’s a lot of work to dig through and find what you’re looking for. With two people here, I don't have a lot of time to spend hours looking for potential issues. ManagedMethods automates a lot of what we would have to do manually using Google’s investigation tool. It’s a huge time saver, so if you don’t have the insight or you’re understaffed, it’s a lifesaver.”

Purchasing Cloud Monitor is one of the best decisions we’ve made and I would recommend it to other IT teams in K-12. For us, Cloud Monitor is hands-off 99% of the time and doesn’t take many people to run it. It’s definitely worth the investment and, when it comes to protecting our data and users in Gmail and Google Workspace, Cloud Monitor is the best cloud security solution that we’ve found.”

A hacker impersonating a school principal is a common scam. We automated keyword rules to pick up on anything that says ‘gift card’, ‘crypto’, or ‘bitcoin’. Cloud Monitor instantly catches these and sends us an alert so we can take care of these threats instantly. We’ve had this issue arise many times before, and after implementing Cloud Monitor, this isn’t even a threat anymore.”

Investing in ManagedMethods is my number one recommendation for other school districts. Just one data breach can outspend the cost, both in terms of the financial burden and the time spent recovering from it. Cloud Monitor gives you access to information that Google and Microsoft have, but makes it much easier and faster to access it. Without it, I wouldn’t feel as good about our security standpoint as I do now.”

ManagedMethods' customer success team reached out to me to conduct a performance assessment of our risks and policies set up in the platform. They hadn't been audited in a while and there were new AI-powered student safety risks we weren't using yet, so I was happy to spend some time with their team. Within a month, the platform identified a couple of student safety risks that needed to be addressed and we were able to get the students the help they needed. We would not have known about these students who needed help without ManagedMethods."

I appreciated that ManagedMethods offers a 30-day free trial. It’s great to be able to run a test in your own environment and make sure it’s going to do what you want it to do—and what sales and marketing say it’s going to do. It’s also a huge benefit to find the risks that you don’t know are there.”

Give ManagedMethods a try! I recommend it to other districts that are looking for this type of solution. The free trial is full-blown, so you’re truly able to demo the full product before you buy. And it’s absolutely worth it to help keep our kids safe.”

Outside of having so much more insight we didn’t have before, I like the way the console is put together compared to my previous console. Investigating incidents that used to take 30 minutes or more can now be done in minutes. Cloud Monitor is straight to the point and provides a lot more data than I thought we’d get originally, and is much easier to work with, which was a big plus.”

Ever since I began using Cloud Monitor, I have been able to monitor risky student and staff activities within my district's Google Workspace domain. I can easily identify and address suspicious cyber activity and take prompt action to prevent phishing and malware attacks before they cause harm. Try out Cloud Monitor's free trial to enhance your cybersecurity measures significantly.”

Using Cloud Monitor, we found that we had staff and students with movies and content we didn’t want in their Drives. Of course, we’ve found many documents where students were chatting, even cautioning their classmates about using appropriate language. We have also referred students to counseling based on clear warning signs of suicidal thoughts.”

While we have other related products, such as GoGuardian, they are very different tools that provide very different services. ManagedMethods provides behind-the-scenes access to Google and Microsoft 365 that allows for bulk changes, automated changes, and automated flagging that are all pieces of the bigger student safety and digital safety puzzle. It's actually one of my favorite platforms to use.”

Cloud Monitor is my preferred solution whenever I come across student accounts being attacked from overseas. Setting up notifications and customizing policies that shut down these suspicious login attempts is helpful. Also, if any app is found to be inappropriate for educational purposes, I can easily block it using Cloud Monitor."

I’m a one-man team and Cloud Monitor is essential to keeping my district secure and our students safe. It doesn’t need a lot of changing or maintenance and it doesn’t take up a ton of my time. Onboarding took about ten minutes and the customer service is exceptional. The platform just works – it’s very simple.”

Security and safety aren’t going anywhere. In K-12, we’re at the point where you have to have something. I can’t recommend ManagedMethods enough. I know there are other products on the market, but Cloud Monitor is the only one I know of that does both security and safety together, which saves us time and money.”

We had a case of bullying where students were stealing iPads and sending out emails under another student’s name. Cloud Monitor picked the emails up immediately, and my team sent them to the administration. Within an hour, the students were sitting in the office of the Principal and Assistant Principal, discussing the ramifications of their actions. I can't say enough how much Cloud Monitor has helped with the digital transformation at school."

If you don’t have Cloud Monitor, you’re missing a big portion of the things that are happening in your district’s Google for Education environment. It doesn’t matter where I am. I can access the platform quickly and easily. I can make a decision about whether I need to address an issue immediately, or whether it can wait until a more convenient time. I don’t know of any other company doing what ManagedMethods can do. It’s well worth the cost.”

Cloud Monitor is useful for managing third-party apps linked to student and staff accounts. It saves time by automating the process of determining which apps are trustworthy, which are questionable, and which pose a high risk. With Cloud Monitor, I can also create a policy that prohibits students and staff from using their district login credentials to access third-party apps.”