Issues of Personal Data Protection in the Digital Educational Environment

This study examines the problems of personal data protection in the digital educational environment through the examples of electronic journals, LMS platforms, distance learning systems, and cloud services. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that the digitalization of education is accompanied by an increase in the volume of collected and processed student data, including identification information, contact details, learning outcomes, attendance records, and activity data on educational platforms. The aim of the study is to analyze the legal, organizational, technical, and behavioral aspects of personal data protection, as well as to assess students’ awareness of digital risks. The research employs methods including the analysis of regulatory, methodological, and scientific documents, comparative legal analysis, a questionnaire survey, descriptive statistics, and percentage analysis. The empirical basis of the study consists of the results of a pilot survey of 34 first- and second-year students majoring in Software Engineering and Information Security. The results demonstrate that the main problem areas are password reuse, insufficient awareness of the types of personal data collected by digital educational platforms, limited ability to recognize phishing threats, and uncertainty regarding the procedure for responding to suspected data leakage or account compromise. The study concludes that a comprehensive approach is required, combining a regulatory framework, technical protection measures, organizational measures, and the systematic improvement of digital literacy among participants in the educational process.