Management of Staff Personal Devices when syncing to school Office365/Google Apps

[flyinghaggis]

I wanted to ask what kind of policies and settings other schools were applying to staff and pupil personal devices such as phones when they're syncing to their school Google and Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 and Google Apps/Gsuite. Do you allow them to sync personal devices and if so do you force management of the devices when they sync so you can enforce things like lock screen passwords and encryption?

 

I just wanted to get an idea what most people would consider appropriate when it comes to staff syncing school data to personal devices?

 

Currently we have management of devices turned on so it prompts staff to give us permission to set passwords/remote wipe/etc when syncing to school systems. I've been checking a few of the settings and given the need to secure school data it strikes me that device encryption should be enforced along with a mandatory lock screen passcode. I feel like we have a duty to ensure that if a pupil or member of the public finds a lost/stolen staff phone then it's critical they can't get at the data on it but I'm sure many staff wouldn't be happy syncing personal devices if we start enforcing policies along those lines.

 

I'm not quite sure where to strike the balance at the moment. What's everyone else's take?

[mukz]

We have enforced pass-lock and remote wipe, and a form of mobile security. staff have to sign a form to agree to this before they can sync. Its a simple form on FireFly for staff and students. This applies to exchange also.

[flyinghaggis]

I'm also thinking that we could probably differentiate between pupils and staff. I'm slightly less concerned about managing pupil phones as they typically wont have access to anything beyond their own personal email and files. Staff on the other hand could have a multitude of sensitive data about pupils and the school. So I'm thinking maybe we perhaps don't really need to manage pupil personal devices? Edited December 1, 2016 by flyinghaggis

[mikkydoos]

We don't allow personal devices full stop at the moment.

 

Its a weigh up between the benefit of BYOD and confidentiality for us.

 

BYOD makes sense if you're mostly cloud but not otherwise IMO. Not with kids sensitive data anyway.

[pete]

Remote wipe, pass-lock, encrypted - same as on school mobile devices. Don't like it? Don't put work email on your device (and frankly, unless you're SLT you're better off not having it on there for a work/life balance).

[mikkydoos]

Remote wipe, pass-lock, encrypted - same as on school mobile devices. Don't like it? Don't put work email on your device (and frankly, unless you're SLT you're better off not having it on there for a work/life balance).

 

That too @pete

[flyinghaggis]

Remote wipe, pass-lock, encrypted - same as on school mobile devices. Don't like it? Don't put work email on your device (and frankly, unless you're SLT you're better off not having it on there for a work/life balance).

 

This was my initial reaction but I know schools can be 'funny' when it comes to things like BYOD so I'll be running it past SLT before changing any settings!

Edited December 1, 2016 by flyinghaggis