How to Keep Your Open Source LMS Data Protected from Unauthorized Access

One of the most important concerns of business organizations is that of their data safety. Since almost all the organizations have some types of sensitive information that needs careful handling, it is crucial to adopt a secured data safety measure that can help to restrict any unauthorized access to the data and keep the hackers at bay. As the software industry moves forward and brings in latest technologies that emphasizes on common security issues when developing the new information system, LMS development is no exception.

Today, most of the academic organizations and corporates offering training sessions to keep their employees updated are using open source LMS for their course delivery and management. But is your data safe in your open source LMS development?  The question is open source technologies may not have all the essential features to protect your sensitive data. So, here is what you need to do?

Adopt the Defense in Depth Approach:

The best approach to attaining the best level of protection for your data is the Defense in Depth approach. This approach helps to leverage multiple security mechanisms and provide a layer of protection like the layers of the onion. Moodle, an open source LMS offers a 6 layer of protection and from the top layer, there is the SSL, which protects the data that is received or sent from your site, which is also followed by the SSO authentication, password security, site registration, role and permissions and finally the disaster and backup recovery.

Using the IP Blocker: 

These blockers prevent any unwanted IP addresses from accessing the data and the admin can manually add some IP addressed to the blocked or allowed lists. This helps to ensure that the known attackers cannot view the user data or the LMS content. But one issue is that the hackers or unauthorized person can always use another IP address and so it is important to use other preventive LMS security measures also.

Password Security: 

Besides authentication and site registration options, your password security is also another important part of your defense in depth strategy. Moodle administrators can do quite a bit to ensure that users have a strong password. They can configure the password policy by defining the number of characters the password should have, how many digits, upper or lowercase letters and etc. They can also define the number of times they can change the password and also force a user to log out after changing the password.

Anti Spam: 

Your LMS development company should add security features that prevent spam and has the potential to collect the user data and restrict any unauthorized access from entering the LMS. Some spams may include phishing, malware and even ransomware. As such, your online learners don’t have to worry about their crucial data being used by spammers or sending them potentially dangerous emails.

Roles and Permissions:

Authentication and registration and how the users can access your Moodle LMS is very important. How can the administrator control what the user can do or view on your site? it is here that user roles and permissions are so important. It is based on the roles and permissions that they are given that controls what the users can do on a Moodle LMS site.  The roles are actually a collection of bundled permissions that the users are assigned so that they have control on what they access, do and see on the site.

Summary:

LMS platforms are highly used by organizations to offer online courses, but maintaining the security of the data is equally important. Following some important tips can help to protect user data and keep your solution safe.