Education Department Updates Rules and Criminal Penalties for Accessing Agency Data

Aaron Boyd reports: The Education Department is rolling out new rules for accessing and handling agency data by third parties—including students, parents and loan companies—with updated criminal penalties for anyone not following the new statutes. The new rules intend to bring the department into compliance with the 2019 Stop Student Debt Relief Scams Act and the 2020 revision to the Higher Education Act of 1965, which “explicitly makes unauthorized access to the department’s IT systems and the misuse of identification devices issued by the department a criminal act,” according to a notice set to publish Friday in the Federal Register. Read more on Nextgov.DataBreaches.netRead More