Security & Privacy
‘Privacy by Design’ with Clever’s lead security engineer
August 3, 2016
clever
For the most recent edition of Mozilla’s excellent series of SF Privacy Labs events, guest host Vivienne Pustell wanted to try something different. She wanted to turn the Lab’s lens to the world of K-12 education for a change – particularly the way that education technology companies build data privacy protections into their products.
The July Privacy Labs event would be called ‘The New Student Privacy Paradigm,’ and would host famed IT security and privacy advocate Jessy Irwin, iKeepSafe policy expert Andrew Rock and Clever’s own lead security engineer Alex Smolen.
Alex’s talk was an interesting primer on how to design products with privacy in mind from day one. He argued that by putting privacy on equal footing with core design considerations like usability, far better outcomes can be achieved, with fewer compromises, than processes that make privacy and security the last stop in the creation of new products.
Alex’s examples of Clever’s ‘privacy by design’ approach in action included early-education secure login service Clever Badges and a recent classroom security feature called Instant Login Assist.
More to read
Company
October 2, 2026
5 Company Culture Tenets We’re Devoted ToClever’s culture tenets define the common ground on which Cleverites work together, and can help to guide their interactions with, and expectations of, each other. We're all threaded together by values that are core to our being, and these common values help our people to feel engaged in the culture and in the company.
Company
Districts
Global
May 12, 2026
Clever Announces Smarter MFA for Schools on Microsoft: Introducing Device TrustFor 87% of school organizations, implementing MFA for students still feels like a far-fetched cybersecurity dream. The concern isn’t just technical — it’s practical. Will it slow down logins? Will younger students be able to manage it? Will teachers end up fielding a flood of helpdesk requests and mount a rebellion? Classroom MFA was built […]
Company
Districts
Global
April 15, 2026
(Student) identities are the new front door for attackers. Is your school ready?The old model of school cybersecurity was built around networks — protect the edge, control the hardware, keep the bad stuff out. That model is gone. Today, your users are the front door. And in K-12, that means millions of student accounts — most of them guarded with just one simple password. That's the reality we dug into during a recent Cybersecure Live webinar. Here’s the breakdown of why the "handle is jiggling" and how to bolt the door.