Do you allow dropbox for staff?

[Sheridan]

Ok so we've always blocked dropbox for staff and students as its personal file storage and they all have GSuite - however staff are increasingly being sent links to resources that are on dropbox.

 

if we allow it, then it means they have access to their personal dropbox accounts, and that opens a channel for data leakage that we have no audit over, so I'm curious to see how anyone else deals with it?

 

Incidentally we use a smoothwall and they have a KB describing how you can block/allow uploads or downloads to dropbox but I've not managed to get that working yet!

[atcoates]

Yes we've been advised against using anything other than the school controlled systems for GDPR reasons etc.

[6Foot2]

Enabled for staff and students here. I dug my heels in but was overruled. Perhaps I can try again...

[Oaktech]

Not if you paid me to. We have GSuite for the kids and governors so they can collaborate, and Office365 for the staff. We can actually control those properly. I'm not keen on GSuite so I'm going to move them all to Office365 in 12 months time anyway - mainly so we can start using Windows Private Store apps.

[NetworkServices]

We don't allow it here. It didn't have anything to do with GDPR at the time, though. We kept receiving complaints that machines around the site were complaining about low disk space. Upon investigation it was caused by Dropbox/Onedrive syncing everything to the local drive. Soon put a stop to that.

[mikemcsharry]

Also - read this with a bit of caution, this may be 12 months out of date...

with Dropbox - there is a programme (I'm far too old to say app) - that resides on PCs and can map a drive on the PC to dropbox. Also dropbox does not virus scan files in and out like gsuite and 365 do. So.. app makes a drive that school Anti Virus not aware of and non checked files being placed in dropbox by a.n. other that you have no control over and appearing in a mapped drive you know nowt about... Lovely.

In addition, I don't think dropbox does end to end encryption of files like 365 and gsuite do.

 

Use GDPR as reason to get shut. Bl**dy hell, we've used Health and Safety as an excuse since 1974

[mikemcsharry]

yes - I spotted this synch problem - dropbox synching to one drive synching to gsuite synching to dropbox. "Our internet is really, really slow"...

[Sheridan]

We don't allow the desktop app, but have found the way to get the smoothwall to allow downloads only (from the web interface) and block uploads. With it working like that its a decent compromise!

[maxrebo]

We have this problem here, SLT made the decision a year ago to pay for all the SLT to have dropbox license! (I know!) So were paying for a service when we have Office 365 and Onedrive for free!.

Windows 7 and Onedrive was a PITA and this was the reason why they made the move, W10 and OD seem a lot better with no sync issues at all.

[AlanD]

Its difficult top see how we could comply with data information requests - and/or other GDPR if staff used their own dropboxes….and why would we when google drive and Office 365 are available.

[mjk]

If you have gsuite then you can prevent most of the sensitive files from being downloaded in the first place. I think this is a better way of preventing data leakage. Once you have done this you can allow staff to use dropbox or any other method that they might like to get data from outside.

[maxrebo]

I`m interested to get some information on this to take to SLT, whats the implications on GDPR when using Dropbox (Staff) on top of the schools Cloud storage provider? (in our case O365)

[mikemcsharry]

quick update - love the bit about virus files, not ... https://www.dropbox.com/help/security/viruses-malware

[Oaktech]

quick update - love the bit about virus files, not ... https://www.dropbox.com/help/security/viruses-malware

 

It's a long winded way of saying "Sorry, you're on your own with this one"

[peej2k]

I`m interested to get some information on this to take to SLT, whats the implications on GDPR when using Dropbox (Staff) on top of the schools Cloud storage provider? (in our case O365)

 

It depends on the tools Dropbox has to allow you to monitor what is occurring on their systems. If people are using their own personal Dropbox accounts, you can't see what is happening to your data, so they could dump spreadsheets worth of data on it and send it anywhere. At one point there was no encryption on Dropbox too, but I believe that has changed now.

 

I have no idea if the paid version has tools to allow you to see who is doing what.