Has anyone else gone down this route or are thinking/planning a similar change?

I would be grateful for any feedback you have that I can pass on to my headteacher.

Thank you in advance.

BBC Report: Cloudflare apologises for outage which took down X and ChatGPT - BBC News

How are schools planning for connectivity failures?

• Backup connections?
• Failover solutions?
• Role of MATs and service providers?

Would be great to hear what approaches others are taking.

As IT professionals, safeguarding pupil data and ensuring operational continuity is part of our core mission. But are we doing enough?

Questions Every School Should Be Asking:

• Are our backups truly secure and immutable?

          Can we recover quickly from a ransomware attack without paying a ransom?

• Have we tested our incident response plan recently?

          Do staff know what to do if systems go down or data is compromised?

• Are staff trained to spot phishing and social engineering

          How often do we run simulations or awareness campaigns?

• Do we know our Cyber Score?

          Have we benchmarked our cyber resilience using tools like Secure Schools?

• Are we relying on outdated systems or unsupported software?

          Is legacy tech creating vulnerabilities we haven’t addressed?

• Are third-party vendors properly vetted?

          Do we know how our suppliers handle and protect our data?

What’s your school doing to stay secure?
Have you faced a breach or near miss? What helped you recover?

Are your systems resilient against today’s threats?
Would your school recover quickly from a breach?

Resources to Consider:

• SEGfL Backup & Recovery – Immutable, cloud-based backups with instant recovery.
• Secure Schools – Cyber audits, policy builders, phishing simulations, and free Cyber Score benchmarking.

Amy advice or support greatly appreciated.

"Investigating - We are aware of an issue affecting connectivity is SEGfL that is preventing internet browsing for a number of schools. Our engineers are investigating this and we will provide further updates within the next 60 minutes."

http://status.rm.com/

Any site can be accessed from students accounts

EIS said information would be on their as they update the situation

http://www.eiskent.co.uk/

Hoping im not breaking any rules with this - I dont get any money for advertising this!

My school will be hosting a frog event, great way for you to see it in action (or those who have it, come pinch our ideas).

Frog Learning Platform | The UKs most advanced Learning Platform

If you wish to attend just visit the link and sign up, we are based in Kent.

Main reason I am putting this here is because I have had a lot of questions regards to frog - even problem fixing. We are currently in our last phase of testing Secure Gateway

Enjoy

Do any other schools in Portsmouth use Insight to give parents reports online.

If so where is your Webserver held and do you have any extra security?

We currently have our Insight webserver in a DMZ in our school with smoothwall acting as a barrier between it and our network. PCC say we do not need to do this as their firewall will protect us but it was put in as an extra layer of security.

I like that we have extra control of the internet for students with smoothwall but with our license running out this year I need to see how others are handling the issue to see if I could use the money in other areas. Also alot of people were unhappy with the performance of our smoothwall for a while although it has been running well for a while now.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

DCC secondary schools are now faced with a choice of remaining with DCC (DPSN Dorset Public Sector Network using KCom as the supplier) or moving to an independent supplier.

Up until now, DCC used Updata to provide service. Updata are going it alone and have written to schools with a more competitively priced offering.

Anybody out there have any thoughts on this ? Or already made the decision to go with DPSN / Updata / other ?

Would be interested to hear...

Mike

Im looking for IT some work in the essex area in or out of education i have just under a years experience working in a secondary school.

I have a fair knowledge of a windows CC4 network, Microsoft office, SIMs and setting up and maintaining an apple network with laptops and iMacs.

any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.

Ryan

“Lean Learning for Smart Teaching”

Date: Thursday 27th October 2011 (09.00am to 4:00pm)

Venue: Chichester College, Chichester, West Sussex

Net- Ctrl will be exhibiting at this year’s JISC RSC South East e-Learning Fair- Lean Learning for Smart Teaching which is going into its seventh year. The focus this year is on the latest information and technology available for improving the learning experience at a time when budgets are tight. For those who have not attended this event before the annual e-Learning Fair has become the premier gathering for all ILT professionals involved in post-16 education in the South East region.

The exhibition is being held at Chichester College and offers attendees the opportunity to listen to presentations, seminars and workshops covering a broad spectrum of the latest education technologies, whilst also providing exhibitors to demonstrate the latest innovations in the field. Net-Ctrl will be demonstrating some of latest technologies ideal for the education market from some of our partners including; Ruckus Wireless, Barracuda Networks, D-Link Storage, Overland Storage, Mobotix IP CCTV Cameras and AEG Power Solutions.

If you would be interested in attending and seeing Net-Ctrl at the event you can book your place by clicking here, Delegates who book by Monday 3rd October 2011 can take advantage of the early-bird delegate rate of £35, compared to the full delegate rate of £50. If you would like some more information about attending or booking a place at the event please send me a PM, or call Net-Ctrl on 01473 281 211.

We are looking for an alternative to MyMaths that is either web or app based for iPad that does not require Flash to run.

Any links would be useful.

Thanks

I need someone that can give me, the network manager, support.

If anyone can recommand such, as I had not good experiance in the past with other support providers.

We are in Surrey, but anywhere around the area will be fine.

Many thanks

Either PM me or post up here

Cheers

Toby

Its been a while since i was at one of the Network Managers Forums that ESCC used to host. Are they still happening??

If so have they been useful. We used to go as it was free bacon butties (Thanks to Viv Reed) but then i joined the ESCC tech team and wasnt allowed to go to the forum!

well i've moved on now and looking to remake some of the contacts i used to have at the forum.

so let me know.

Mark

I'm currently organising a Skeptics in the Pub (Skeptics in the Pub) meeting for the 25th January 2011 7:00PM at:

The Mermaid

222 New Road

PO2 7RW

This is an off-shoot from the Hampshire Skeptics Society.

The pub have agreed to do some snacks too - trying to get an idea of numbers before we've had a meeting is near impossible! If you'd like to attend drop me a PM, reply on this thread, join our facebook group (Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub ( Pompey SitP ) | Facebook) or Twitter feed @sitpportsmouth

I'd urge anyone interested in attending or speaking to get involved - we are talking to some very interesting people at the moment!

About 10 minutes to smashing it with a hammer.

Please post or send me a PM if you're interested in attending.

This doc makes it fairly clear:

http://www.slough.gov.uk/moderngov/Published/C00000130/M00003359/AI00013979/SchoolsForum160909BSFCriticalPath.pdf

Looks like Feb is when the ball starts rolling properly.

Anyone else facing this issue?

It is being held at the Hop Farm Conference Centre, Paddock Wood, Kent, TN12 6PY, from 7 - 9pm.

For those who don't know about these, they are based on unconferences - anyone can speak about strategies for teaching and learning in a 21st Century classroom, either for 7 or 2 minutes. Alternatively, you can simply listen to the talks, meet other like-minded professionals, or simply drink coffee!

The best thing is that they are completely FREE! Register your interest at www.TeachMeet.org.uk, or let me, Stephen Lockyer, know using mr.lockyer@gmail.com or on twitter with @mrlockyer .

We hope you can come!

Anyway, NAT. KCN supply the school with a /30 (1022 addresses) IP range. This is insufficient for our needs, we have over 1000 devices on the network already. So, we have in place a PIX firewall that is performing NAT for our VLANed network, but both the school and EIS are considering it's removal. I read that they will now supply us with a Cisco 2811 that they can configure to do NAT (?), but have not yet managed, after over a week of waiting, to speak to anyone at EIS on this subject.

My prefered soultion is normally to use ISA 2006 in firewall mode to do NAT, firewall the network, cache and filter web traffic, and publish web servers. KCN on the other hand, already supply us with one ISA 2004 (WebSense) that is caching & filtering web traffic, and are suggesting we install another ISA box, in single NIC mode, to simply be used for re-directing and publishing our internal servers onto the web.

I would like to know if:

- any other schools are running the KCN Cisco 2811 as a gateway to VLAN'ed network.

- or if you've got more than the standard /30 address space from them

- come up with other solutions that EIS have allowed you to implement (or managed to implement without their help!)