Security & privacy
Built to pass the IT committee.
Lantern keeps every student name and report comment onshore, encrypted and audited. Student information is not used to train third-party AI models. Here is exactly how, in plain language.
01 · Data sovereignty
Student data is designed to be hosted and processed in Australia.
Storage, backups and processing for student report content run inside Australian AWS regions. The primary region is Sydney; if Sydney becomes unavailable, we fail over to Melbourne. AI-assisted report drafting runs on Australian-region enterprise AI infrastructure (Google Vertex AI). Some supporting service providers — user sign-on, billing and certain support functions — may process information outside Australia; where they do, we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles. The detail is in our privacy policy.
- Primary region: AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2)all live data
- Disaster recovery: AWS Melbourne (ap-southeast-4)cross-region DR
- AI inference pinned to Australian regionsno offshore brokers
The legal entity behind Lantern is Ember Education Pty Ltd, ABN [PLACEHOLDER: 11-digit ABN], ACN 693 296 409, an Australian company hosting on Australian soil.
02 · How we protect it
Encrypted, access-controlled and fully audited.
Every layer is locked down by default: the network, the database, the backups and the people who can touch them. The controls below are the ones a security reviewer will ask about first.
- Hosted in Sydney
- All student and report data lives in AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2), with disaster recovery in Melbourne (ap-southeast-4). Student report content is intended to be hosted and processed within Australia, subject to the operation of our service-provider arrangements.
- AI runs onshore
- Drafting and compliance checking run on enterprise AI infrastructure pinned to Australian regions. Prompts are not routed through overseas brokers.
- Not used to train AI models
- We do not use student information to train third-party AI models. Prompts and report content are not used for model training and remain subject to contractual controls and deletion rights. This is a contractual commitment, not a setting.
- Encrypted end to end
- TLS 1.2+ for everything in transit; AES-256 at rest for the database, backups and object storage. Encryption keys are managed in AWS KMS.
- Least-privilege access
- Every query is scoped to the signed-in user's school. Staff access is role-based, multi-factor and granted on a need-to-know basis, with production access reviewed regularly.
- Immutable audit trail
- An append-only audit log records who viewed, drafted, edited, approved and exported what, and when. It cannot be altered after the fact.
- No student accounts
- Students never log in and have no profiles. They exist only as names on their teacher's class roster. There is no student-facing surface to attack.
- Deletion on a defined timeline
- When a school leaves or requests erasure, data is soft-deleted immediately and permanently purged from primary stores after a 30-day recovery window. Information may remain in secure backup systems for a limited period before being permanently deleted.
03 · No training on your data
We do not use student information to train third-party AI models.
Lantern learns each teacher’s voice only within their own school’s workspace, to draft that teacher’s comments. Student notes, report drafts and the prompts we send to the AI are not used to train third-party AI models, and remain subject to contractual controls and deletion rights. These commitments are reflected in our agreements with our service providers, so they cannot quietly change.
Not ready for AI drafting at all? Schools can run Lantern as a compliance checker only: comments in, findings out, no generation.
04 · Privacy by design
Aligned to the Australian Privacy Principles.
Privacy isn’t a policy bolted on at the end. It shapes how Lantern is built. Here is how our controls map to the Australian Privacy Principles that govern how your school’s information is handled.
- APP 1 · Open and transparent
- A plain-language privacy policy, collection notices and this security overview set out exactly what we collect and why.
- APP 3 & 5 · Collection
- Lantern collects only what a teacher needs to draft a comment: a student's name and the teacher's own notes. We handle student information on behalf of schools, which remain responsible for their relationships with students and parents.
- APP 6 · Use and disclosure
- Data is used solely to provide the service to your school. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use student information to train third-party AI models.
- APP 8 · Cross-border disclosure
- Student report content is intended to be hosted and processed within Australia, subject to the operation of our service-provider arrangements. Some service providers — such as sign-on, billing and support services — may process information overseas; where they do, we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.
- APP 11 · Security
- Encryption, least-privilege access, audit logging and a documented breach-response process protect the information we hold.
- APP 12 & 13 · Access and correction
- Schools can request access to, correction of, or erasure of their data through a documented workflow inside the product.
The full detail lives in our privacy policy, and the contractual commitments, including data-handling and breach obligations, are set out in our School Services Agreement.
05 · When something goes wrong
A clear breach-response process.
We hope never to use it, but we maintain a documented incident- and breach-response process aligned to the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme under the Privacy Act. If an eligible data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we will:
- Contain and assess the incident promptlydocumented plan
- Notify affected schools as soon as practicableyou decide next steps
- Support notification to the OAIC and affected individuals where requiredNDB scheme
- Run a post-incident review and remediate root causesevery time
Security questions or to report a concern, contact security@embereducation.com.au.
06 · AI governance
Responsible AI, by design.
Lantern’s use of AI is governed in line with Australia’s Voluntary AI Safety Standard (2024). The teacher is always the author and approver. Lantern drafts and checks, but never publishes a comment on its own.
- Human accountability: the teacher approves every commentnever auto-published
- Transparency: drafts are clearly AI-assisted; edits flaggednever silently rewritten
- Testing & monitoring of model quality and safetyongoing
- Records that let you contest and trace an AI-assisted draftimmutable audit log
Because every action is recorded in the immutable audit trail, a school can always see where AI was involved in a comment and who signed off on the final wording.
For procurement and IT reviewers.
The controls behind the claims, ready for assessment.
We are ready to complete State and Territory education-department vendor security assessments and questionnaires. Our School Services Agreement covers data-handling, service-provider and breach obligations; see our current third-party service providers and privacy policy.
Bring us your toughest security questionnaire.
School leaders and IT teams: we’ll walk your reviewers through the architecture, the audit trail and the School Services Agreement, and answer the questions your assessment template asks.