Data Protection and GDPR

What is GDPR?

On May 25th 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 came into force. The GDPR is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and is intended to unify the policies and strengthen the safety and security of all data held within an organisation.

This legislation replaced the Data Protection Act (DPA) and is considered the most significant data protection legislation of the last 20 years. There is a plethora of information about the new legislation available online. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) provides a good starting point with its Overview of GDPR.

Data Controllers and Data Processors

Schools are the data controllers of staff and pupil-related data. The data controller is the person or organisation that determines what data is extracted, what purpose it is used for and who is allowed to process the data. GDPR increases the responsibility schools have to inform pupils and parents about how their data is being used and by whom. Atom Learning is the data processor of staff, parent and pupil data when this data has been uploaded by a school. This is data we are trusted with but do not control.

Atom Learning is the data controller of parent and pupil data that has been uploaded and managed by parents directly onto the Atom Learning platform.

How we comply with GDPR

• Cloud Hosted

  • We are fully hosted in the cloud in servers based within the EEA.

• Data Managed in EEA

  • We store, process and manage all personal data within the EEA.

• No Third Parties – We do not share any personal data with third parties.

• Bank Level Encryption

  • We encrypt your data in Transit and At Rest using bank-grade 256-bit SSL.

• Permission-based Access – Schools have full control over which users have access to which data.

• Secure logins – Every user has secure logins with automatic logouts after periods of inactivity.

• Easily retrievable data – Schools can easily download all data that Atom Learning holds about a pupil, parent, teacher or school.

• Permanent deletion of data – All users can make subject access and/or right to be forgotten requests by contacting [email protected]

• Sanitised data – all pupil data is sanitised before use by internal staff for data analysis and machine learning.