Absolute Software Introduces New Resilience for Student Devices Offering

VANCOUVER, British Columbia and SAN JOSE, Calif. — December 6, 2021 — Absolute Software™ (NASDAQ: ABST) (TSX: ABST), a leader in self-healing Zero Trust solutions, today announced the availability of Absolute Resilience for Student Devices, a new K-12 offering specially designed to enable school IT teams with the critical capabilities needed to better manage individual (1:1) device programs in hybrid learning environments. The company’s new offering includes Visibility and Control of student devices, access to key information for auditing and reporting, and annual support to streamline the collection of missing devices.  

Despite most schools returning to in-person learning for this school year, 1:1 device programs have become the norm - increasing the number of devices distributed to students by 74 percent in 2020 alone. The rise in 1:1 programs also contributed to a 45 percent increase in the number of devices reported either missing or stolen at the end of the school year, according to Absolute’s latest Education Endpoint Risk Report. The new hybrid/ learn-from-anywhere model underscores the complexity IT teams are facing as they scale systems and processes for device management—from deployment to collection, configuration to end-of-life – and the need to keep track of it all for reporting requirements connected to federal funding.

Combining Absolute’s ubiquitous device Visibility and Control capabilities with a missing device collection service managed by a team of reclamation experts, the Absolute Resilience for Student Devices offer is designed to alleviate this growing problem for school districts and their IT teams. With end-of-year missing device collection now becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming, Absolute’s ability to plan, execute, and enable a seamless device collection process helps to mitigate device loss, and simplifies auditing and reporting for devices purchased with state or federal disbursements such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) or Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF).

“Every year schools are forced to spend valuable time and resources trying to recover student devices that would be better spent focused on providing students with the best learning experience possible,” said John Herrema, EVP of Product and Strategy at Absolute Software. “By enabling schools with this new offering, education IT teams can further simplify the management and collection of missing or stolen devices at the end of each school year and save hundreds of millions of dollars that can be re-allocated towards the student’s learning curriculum.”

The Absolute Resilience for Student Devices Offer was specifically designed to help resource-strapped IT teams at K-12 school districts manage and maintain their 1:1 device programs for the long term. Benefits include the ability to:

• Effectively track, monitor, and secure student devices no matter where they are, both on and off campus
• Stay audit ready with customizable reports on devices purchased with US state and federal disbursements such as the CARES Act, ARPA, and the FCC’s ECF
• Improve device return rates, and save time and money, by outsourcing missing device collection to Absolute’s team of experts who will operationalize the process
• Maintain device operations and security posture with comprehensive remote lifecycle management capabilities — from configuration to decommissioning — and the ability to address the latest reported vulnerabilities across device fleets

The Absolute Resilience for Student Devices offer has an MSRP of USD $49.95 per device for a 3-year term for new customers. Other term lengths are also available. The offer is initially available for K-12 school districts in the US and Canada.

For more information about Absolute’s education solutions, visit here.