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Becoming CIPA Compliant in Google Workspace for Education

CIPA Compliance & Google Workspace for Education

Google Workspace for Education is the most popular cloud platform among schools and districts, with 70M+ users, including teachers, students and administrators, according to Google.

With that, schools today can communicate and collaborate better inside and outside the classroom — saving on operational costs through incorporating online classes and teaching students how to best use technology. 

While reaping these fantastic benefits, U.S. schools also need to ensure they’re CIPA compliant.

CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) is a federal law in the U.S. that requires all K12 schools and libraries to ensure students are protected from harmful online content and/or practices.

If your school allows children to access the internet, you need to track access to inappropriate content on school and library computers.

This requires you to implement an “Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures” that “must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are (a) obscene; (b) child pornography; or (c) or harmful to minors.”

You also need to ensure “the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms and other forms of direct electronic communications”, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

GAT Shield for CIPA Compliance in Google Workspace for Education

By using GAT Shield to compliment your Google Workspace for Education for CIPA Compliance, not only will you see in real-time granular detail of all your users’ browsing activities, you’ll also view the exact URL as outlined in the following post: How to View the Full URL of Browsing History.

We’ve also recently launched a new section under the GAT Shield Configuration area called ‘General & CIPA’.

By clicking that box, GAT Shield deploys CIPA compliance all over your entire domain or any selected group, organisation unit or set of users.

When activated the following features are enabled:

  • A special URL filtering category is called ‘CIPA-Compliant-Category’, where all sites under this category are blocked.
  • Strict Safe Search for both words and images on Google search (age-appropriate content).
  • Restricted YouTube access  (age-appropriate content).
  • Access to websites via IP addresses is blocked (also blocks access to proxies that are not covered by name).

Additionally, each category can be individually tailored or expanded under its respective configuration area on the left side menu.

URL access category can be edited only from there.

We strongly recommend deploying this setting for all educational domains by following these simple steps :

1. Navigate to GAT Shield – Configuration settings

2. Click on the CIPA Compliance tap at the top of the page.
3. Click on the checkmark to enable CIPA compliant features.
4. Select the scope to the users you want to apply the rule for.
5. Click Save.

The CIPA Compliance features will then be enabled for your domain.

If you’d like to run a trial of our products please install GAT+ from the Google Workspace Marketplace and contact us at support@generalaudittool.com  with any questions you may have.

To request a demo please click here and fill out the form. We’ll get back to you in less than 12 hours on weekdays.

If you tried GAT in the past and would like to run a fresh trial again, please enquire through this form. 

Want to know more?

Contact GAT Labs today for a FREE trial or a live demonstration of all our products’ features.

It has never been easier to do more, see more and protect more, wherever your Google Workspace and Chrome users are in the world.