Rampant Cyberbullying in High Schools Calls for Nex-Gen Web Security

SAN DIEGO, May 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- High school students today have a one-in-six chance of falling victim to cyberbullying in a given 12-month timeframe, according to a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies (May 5, 2013). The study, based on a survey of 15,425 students conducted by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also showed that girls were more than twice as likely to be victims as boys (22.1% vs. 10.8%).

While schoolyard bullying may have seemed like a rite of passage for their parents, this study shows that the nation's children are more vulnerable than ever to malicious attacks and bullying through the various social media outlets and mobile devices that enable perpetrators to reach a wide audience while concealing their own identity. Not only does electronic bullying humiliate and destroy self-esteem, but it can even lead to chronic depression and suicide in its young victims.

While technology in the classroom is here to stay and offers myriad educational benefits, schools and staff who don't properly address cyberbullying or harassment may be held liable under certain state and federal laws if they are found negligent in using reasonable care to protect children. In spite of the anti-bullying policies in place at many schools, the jump in the number of teens bringing mobile devices, such as tablets, iPods, and smart phones, to school calls for districts to develop more aggressive strategies and techniques to deal with the dangers their wide accessibility brings to campus.

Filtering and reporting of students' online activity represents the most effective means of combating cyberbullying, short of banning electronic communication devices altogether. However, traditional MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions fail educators in that the reporting is usually limited to ISP addresses instead of individual users. Clearly a next-generation tool, like the iboss SWG, is required to provide adequate protection for children.

The iboss SWG web-security solution empowers school officials to secure all aspects of on and off-campus Internet traffic. Its reporting features drill down to detailed user information to show what a specific individual is seeing on his or her desktop and include the ability to set triggers to automatically record user activity when it detects high-risk behavior. So when a suspected cyberbully is reported, educators can use these features to confirm allegations. In addition, the iboss SWG Event and Threat Reporter contains single pane of glass reporting with email alerts of high-risk and suspicious user activity. These features are key to proactively detecting bullying and harassment, whether it occurs on wired, BYOD, mobile, or off-premises devices.

"At iboss Security, our goal is extending technology use in education while providing the tools administrators need to identify high-risk behaviors, such as cyberbullying. By identifying high-risk patterns, we can alert administrators, parents, and teachers proactively before a situation escalates," says Peter Martini, Co-Founder iboss Security.

About iboss™
iboss Security is an industry leader in Network Security, Bandwidth Management, Compliance based Mobile Device Management (C/MDM) and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Management. The iboss Secure Web Gateway line provides Scalable Internet access and application control, bandwidth management, and dynamic user based reporting and analytics. Our intelligent bandwidth shaping tools are all about efficiency of design. We provide compliance management products to identify, manage, and secure access of the network for all users, on or off network while retaining granular controls providing the flexible access needed.

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SOURCE iboss Security