12 October 2015
Online Safety, Education Services
Schools, just like any other commercial or public sector institutions are now reliant upon the internet and broadband services for day-to-day operations and activities. These technologies bring a huge range of opportunities and benefits, offering new ways to support teaching and learning, whilst streamlining operational and administrative processes. But they also bring a range of risks if not managed and maintained appropriately.
What do I need to think about?
Your information security policy should demonstrate a reasonable duty of care in providing a safer and better online environment for all users, so does yours cover the following?
» Creating a culture of responsible use
» Statutory Requirements
» Filtering and Monitoring solutions
» Secure Transfer Services
» Managing mobile devices
With students and their smartphones now coming hand-in-hand, the demand for Bring Your Own Device ( BYOD) is increasing. Both students and teachers are wishing to connect their own devices (tablets, smartphones, and laptops) to your school’s network, which can bring a great number of benefits including facilitating learning beyond the classroom, and greater engagement through interactive learning. Moving your services to naturally distributed and device agnostic platforms can also bring cost savings in the long-term.
But implementing BYOD requires a well thought out strategy which considers, amongst many other things, the readiness of your services to work in a distributed manner, the capabilities of your wireless network, your web filtering infrastructure, end point security and access control. The policies need to be in place to handle the security implications of such a large shift in your approach to service delivery.
» Alerting illegal content & incident management
» Preparing for a hack
How can SWGfL help?
If you feel that your information security policy isn’t quite stacking up and you need some support, don’t worry, the team at SWGfL are here to help.
We have developed a half-day training session called ‘Lines of Defence – Information Security for Schools’ which will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and support you in developing a strategy to improve your policies and practices.
If you would be interesting in booking this session for your school, please contact the Education Team.