Four Basic Principles of Examus Philosophy

We are convinced that, to build customer trust, a company needs to have a clear philosophy that considers clients' interests. Here are the fundamental principles which underpin Examus’s work.

Confidentiality

During proctoring, all sorts of data are regularly exchanged and processed, including sensitive data. The security of data storage and transmission is an important issue for our customers and us. Our reputation depends on how strictly we follow data security standards.

From the very beginning, we take a systematic approach to ensure data confidentiality. For example, confidential information is only accessed by a strictly limited number of people, such as customer staff, Examus proctors, and technical support. The data storage period is specified in the contract. Usually, it lasts from two weeks to three months; however, the terms can be changed upon the customer's request.

From a legal point of view, Examus is fully compliant with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). We have a clearly defined privacy policy that explains to our users what data we store and process.

From a technical point of view, we also aim for maximum security. For data storage, we use only trusted cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Microsoft Cloud. At the clients' request, all confidential information can also be stored on their physical server. Regardless of the storage type, all data is transmitted only over an encrypted channel created with SSL certificates, and the interface is accessed only over HTTPS protocol.

User-friendly service

We always keep evolving our processes' optimization. Sometimes fresh ideas come from our clients. For instance, we had a project where over 100000 proctored exams were conducted in just a month. The customer needed to quickly create hundreds of proctor accounts to review a deluge of video records. Eventually, the support staff got exhausted from adding profiles manually and turned to the developers for help. As a result, a new module for mass staff creation/editing has been created.

Another example: recent security policy updates for many Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge, etc.) have occasionally created technical issues for some test takers. To solve this problem, we have developed our lightweight browser with maximum privacy protection.

Automation

Everything that can be automated needs to be automated. This approach significantly reduces costs, speeds up processes, and lightens the support team and proctor workload.

Frequently, large customers conduct daily testing simultaneously with tens of thousands of users. At this rate, they do not have enough time and capacity for even a random video records review. Ideally, they want all monitoring processes to be automated. Specifically, for such clients, we have enhanced our algorithms. Now, AI not only detects infringements but also tracks their duration. This increased the accuracy of catching cheaters, on average, by 30-35%, and in some cases even by 55%.

As a result, we were able to develop a fully automated online proctoring mode. AI independently monitors infringements and, based on this information, determines whether the exam was passed honestly or not. We still believe that post-review by human proctors is highly desirable. However, if customers' resources and time are limited, they can use the automatic mode.

Safety environment

The pandemic has been going on for over a year, and there are no countries left that the coronavirus has not affected. It seems that the moment when we finally can take off our masks with a sigh of relief will not come in the near future.

Therefore, Examus is actively working to ensure that proctored exams can be taken in full compliance with all safety requirements. In December 2020, we updated our neural network so that it can now recognize masked faces. Thus, our customers can easily conduct face-to-face exams while still meeting all safety requirements.