Data Safety and Security
Can I trust Mega Seating Plan with my students' data?
Mega Seating Plan handles the data of over 600,000 students across the world. Since launching in 2015, the security and safety of student data has been at the core of the app.
However you choose to import your data, you and your school are in control of what data is imported and how it is used. Schools have total control over what data fields (if any) are imported for their students. Mega Seating Plan does not import any data without your explicit permission and does not share data with third parties.
Is data encrypted?
Yes. All data is encrypted both at rest and in transit. Mega Seating Plan is hosted in a database that applies military-grade AES-256 encryption to all data.
Separately, all personally-identifiable student data (such as names and email addresses) is encrypted using a key that is unique to each user. This ensures that in the event of unauthorised database access, student data would appear like this:
Data transmitted between Mega Seating Plan and your web browser, as well as any data transmitted between a partner integration and Mega Seating Plan, is encrypted using HTTPS. This means that data cannot be intercepted or tampered with in transit.
Is student data shared with third parties?
No. Student data is never shared with third parties.
Can seating plans be shared with other users?
There are two ways that seating plans and their student data can be shared with other users:
Whole-school sharing
For schools with Platinum or Gold subscriptions, all seating plans are automatically accessible to other teachers in the same school. This service is provided to allow cover/substitute teachers to access the seating plan for the lesson they are teaching.
Manual sharing
Seating plans and classes can also be shared directly with other users of Mega Seating Plan. This sharing is only with the explicit positive permission of the class teacher and can be revoked at any time. Learn more here.
Mega Seating Plan uses artificial intelligence. Should I be concerned?
Mega Seating Plan uses artificial intelligence in a couple of ways. In both cases, your data and student data are kept secure and private.
Intelligent seating plan generation
Mega Seating Plan uses a purpose-built algorithm to automatically arrange students according to your requirements, student preferences and student data. This algorithm is internal to Mega Seating Plan and no data is transmitted to third parties. The algorithm's purpose is purely to optimize seating charts based on your requirements. It generates up to 10,000 possible layouts, iterating between each one to find the best possible arrangement. It does not make judgements about students and is not trained by student data.
Magic Reports
Magic Reports harnesses the power of GPT-4 to help teachers write detailed student reports, references and letters of recommendation. When a request is submitted to Magic Reports, this is sent to OpenAI (the creators of GPT-4 and ChatGPT) and a response is generated. This response returns to Mega Seating Plan and is displayed to the teacher. The data that is transmitted does not include any personally-identifiable information about students, you or your school.
Although the generated reports may include your students' first names, these are added to the response from OpenAI by your web browser. These names are never sent to OpenAI.
Is Mega Seating Plan compliant with GDPR?
Mega Seating Plan is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is incorporated in English law as the Data Protection Act 2018. This means that you have the right to access, rectify and delete your data at any time. You can also request a copy of your data at any time. The data protection page and the data sharing agreements provide more detail about how Mega Seating Plan complies with GDPR.
Under GDPR, Mega Seating Plan acts as a data processor. Your school retains responsiblity as the data controller.
As a company registered in England & Wales, Mega Seating Plan's compliance with GDPR is regulated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Our registration number is #ZA331933.
