How Colleges Can Meet the Growing Demand for Know Your Student (KYS) While Complying with HIPAA, IPEDs, and Other Regulations

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a popular process businesses in several industries use to verify the identities of customers and users. It allows them to understand the risks each individual might pose with simple verification checks, network monitoring, and other security assessments. Due to its massive success in the banking, fintech, insurance, and crypto industry, the education industry plans to launch its version of the protocol called Know Your Student (KYS).

KYS compliance will include a set of regulations created by colleges to reduce malicious activities in real-time. They will protect student information, monitor user activities, and maximize the reliability of identity verification on campus. However, many experts have brought forth concerns about this innovative security transformation, particularly regarding privacy.

In this post, we’ll share how colleges can meet the growing demand for know your student (KYS) while complying with HIPAA, IPEDs, and other regulations.

The Rise of Know Your Student (KYS) Protocols in US Colleges – How Campuses Can Ensure Compliance

The last two decades have taught colleges that a person’s online identity isn’t always a true representation of who they are. Higher education has become a popular hotspot for cybersecurity threats, such as phishing, data breaches, fraudulent student applications, and more. These threats have wreaked havoc on hundreds of colleges in the United States, including major IVY league schools.

Until recently, colleges haven’t been made subject to money laundering cases. However, dozens of high-profile money laundering cases in the higher ed industry have damaged the reputation of several institutes. According to Prosperity of America, there are around 764,000 students enrolled in US colleges.

Many of these students come from countries deemed high-risk ML countries, making it essential for institutions to become more vigilant in ensuring their accounts remain free of illegal money.

At the same time, colleges need to be extra careful when approving scholarship funds or other forms of student aid. Today, thousands of scammers use fake bot applications and AI-generated essays, statements of purpose, and recommendation letters to improve their approval chances.

As a result, KYS protocols are becoming a viable solution to confirm, with a high level of assurance, that students and applicants are who they say they are. More importantly, KYS procedures will reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and financial fraud.

However, before colleges can implement KYS on their campuses, they need to comply with different regulatory bodies, such as HIPAA, IPEDS, FERPA, and PPRA, to name a few. All these bodies are responsible for protecting student privacy online.

KYS presents a conflict of interest between campuses looking to increase infrastructure monitoring and governance bodies looking to ensure student information and activities remain private. To comply with these regulations, colleges need to find a middle ground and remediate all potential compliance lapses. ?

They need to work with solution providers that can help them develop a compliance program with a robust management structure, powerful requisite resources (software and hardware), and dedicated response and reporting protocols.

How S.A.F.E Can Help

With Know Your Student (KYS) set to become a global trend in the higher ed industry, no solution can benefit colleges like AMSA Connect’s S.A.F.E. The AI-powered cybersecurity software has been designed to automatically detect, report, and eliminate fraudulent student applications and fake application documentation like essays, SOPs, and recommendation letters.

Therefore, it can serve as an excellent KYC/KYS tool for ensuring only legitimate applicants apply for admission during the admission cycle by leveraging several checks, including IPs, VoIP numbers, VPNs, etc. Moreover, through active monitoring, S.A.F.E. can also detect fake .edu email addresses and stop fraudsters from accessing exclusive files, applications, and events on campus.

By adopting our powerful solution, you can save weeks or even months by accelerating digital identity verification drives on your campus and establishing different KYS screening checks on student portals or apps. Secondly, you can turn the data collected into valuable security and risk management insights while ensuring compliance with HIPAA, IPEDS, and other regulations.

Contact our team immediately, and let us equip your campus systems and team with this game-changing security solution.?