Boardingware + ThisData: Cutting edge security for your boarding school.

At Boardingware, we are always seeking ways to improve the security for our users. With student information stored in the cloud, it is absolutely crucial that we are 100% committed to protecting your data. We believe that boarding school is a premium product, so you need to be sure that your boarding software is providing you with first-class security.Today we’re announcing our recent partnership with ThisData; which is a fellow New Zealand company built by the creators of Litmos.The core focus for ThisData is to provide SaaS companies and their users with real-time account takeover detection. As their video suggests, most account breaches happen due to weak or stolen passwords.We could enforce more complicated passwords and 2-factor authentication, but research shows the engagement levels for these features is very low for people that aren’t tech savvy which is common among parents and older staff members.With a wide range of users accessing Boardingware, we feel that it is important to enforce an extra layer of security without compromising the user experience. This partnership will allow Boardingware to detect any threats in advance, so we can prevent trouble from happening in the first place.ThisData detects user’s login locations and will send alerts if it sees anything out of the ordinary. Further from this, it will build a behavioural profile for each Boardingware user based on regular usage patterns. Any time this behaviour deviates from the normal profile, an alert will be sent and it will investigate any potential threats.We plan to roll this out in 2 phases.The first phase that we have implemented gives our team the ability to monitor this information and receive alerts for any unusual activity.[caption id="attachment_1449" align="aligncenter" width="960"]

Above: What our dashboard looks like. This highlights any risk currently occurring across the Boardingware client base.[/caption]The next phase we release will allow our users to receive personal alerts to notify them about any kind of unusual account activity. From a UX standpoint it will be similar to the way google notifies you if there is a login from an unusual location.[caption id="attachment_1455" align="aligncenter" width="215"]

Above: Notification for a possible breach of your Boardingware account[/caption]Another great aspect that we are excited about, is that ThisData uses machine learning to create a data network by aggregating anonymized threat data. It is pulled from their customers and from their partners like AlienVault which is then shared across the customer base. This lets us tap into the knowledge and experience of thousands of companies to help combat cyber threats collectively.

Ultimately, It’s the combination of security and design that lead to our decision to work with ThisData. We want you to have the very best security in the world without compromising our raved-about customer experience.If you have any questions or feedback please feel free to start the discussion below in the comments section![marketo-fat form="1107"]