Exam board not accepting encrypted Sandisk USB stick?

[Zourous]

Anyone had this? No mention on any guidance I remember reading. Sounds like a load of rubbish to me. Of course now they want us to send it all to them again via another route.

[3s-gtech]

Yes, we've had that. Unless it's unencrypted they wouldn't take it. Kind of amazing in this day and age - or that some subjects/boards still aren't using secure uploads.

[free780]

Had this when GDPR first came in 2018. We suggested a SharePoint Site as its more secure than a USB stick getting lost in the post. Forcing MFA for guest users would make it very secure.

 

Apparently it is too difficult for examiners to deal with a password to unlock the pen drive or click a few links to prove they own their e-mail address.

[Boredguy]

Strange, all our exam boards that needed files had an online secure site to upload them to, and the 1 set of files that had to be sent off for Drama went on a Bitlockered USB drive with no issues.

 

In this day there should be no need to send them anything on external media

[mavhc]

Which exam board and when can we all avoid using them?

[jthompson]

I think in some cases it comes down to the individual examiner at the other end sending the thing back to the exam board and saying "It doesn't work". I know we've had a few instances where we've had to provide some guidance directly to individual examiners about how to use 7-Zip to extract contents from a USB stick that we've submitted. THat was a few years ago now though, and all the exam boards that we deal with now stipulate the use of either BitLocker or 7-Zip when submitting a USB stick, and provide the encryption key to be used.

With these SanDisk devices in question, were the contents encrypted with a bundled SanDisk encryption utility (i.e. the type that wants to autoplay when the the device is mounted)?

[Zourous]

I think in some cases it comes down to the individual examiner at the other end sending the thing back to the exam board and saying "It doesn't work". I know we've had a few instances where we've had to provide some guidance directly to individual examiners about how to use 7-Zip to extract contents from a USB stick that we've submitted. THat was a few years ago now though, and all the exam boards that we deal with now stipulate the use of either BitLocker or 7-Zip when submitting a USB stick, and provide the encryption key to be used.

With these SanDisk devices in question, were the contents encrypted with a bundled SanDisk encryption utility (i.e. the type that wants to autoplay when the the device is mounted)?

 

It was a few months ago and I can't remember if it autoplayed or not but it would have used the encryption utility, but surely the point is if you don't support SanDisk's, tell us before we waste a lot of time preparing them this way. In some ways they almost have this "god" status where they can do what they like because we want our results processed!

[mavhc]

All built in USB encryption tools are useless, to be fair, and why would you start running random code from a usb stick someone posted you?

[bald_pig]

Can you post a copy of the exam board's documentation? They usually specify how they want the drive to be encrypted.

[Zourous]

Can you post a copy of the exam board's documentation? They usually specify how they want the drive to be encrypted.

 

I could have done but I sent it back. I only accept letters in courier font size 14.

[jthompson]

I always ask to see a copy of the exam board's current materials submission guidelines for the particular qualification in question. They can be quite exacting about filename conventions, for instance, with different requirements for different qualifications year on year.

[David44]

I think that's fair enough in this case. Would you run an .exe from a memory stick sent to you or ask one of your users to do so?

 

Maybe you trust Sandisk but would you run an .exe from a memory stick manufactured by Вирус? Better to have a policy not to run any .exe file.

[msi_school]

I always ask to see a copy of the exam board's current materials submission guidelines for the particular qualification in question. They can be quite exacting about filename conventions, for instance, with different requirements for different qualifications year on year.

 

I don't go anywhere near naming files for submission, the Exams office and the department put the named files/folders in one folder in the exams share and I transfer them to the USB and hand this to Exams.

[Simcfc73]

I sent 2 of for our PE department with videos on and the examiner couldn't read either... so ended up uploading them via out Exams Officer.

[mavhc]

Of course on exam day the upload system for Edexcel was overloaded and failed over and over. If only they could have predicted usage patterns and planned for that, sadly they had no idea that exactly the number of students who'd paid for exams would be having their data uploaded on exactly the day the exam was on.

[Arcath]

We've sent our coursework off using BitLocker encryption set to the password the exam board told us to use. Not had anyone come back and say it didn't work.

[Zourous]

There’s a bit more to my story. Unbeknown to me the teacher concerned received the encrypted USB’s back in the post to then upload to their site. She tried to do this herself and dragged the files from the vault straight to the drag and drop upload area on their site. This resulted with files in neither location!! I called Sandisk support in the hope the data could be retrieved but no luck. You can’t make this stuff up!

[jthompson]

Oh no!

We set up a shared drive on Google where we place copies of any files sent off to exam boards, so that we have an archived copy in case of resubmissions being requested. They stay there until appeals and things are all done with for the year.

[mavhc]

There’s a bit more to my story. Unbeknown to me the teacher concerned received the encrypted USB’s back in the post to then upload to their site. She tried to do this herself and dragged the files from the vault straight to the drag and drop upload area on their site. This resulted with files in neither location!! I called Sandisk support in the hope the data could be retrieved but no luck. You can’t make this stuff up!

 

How is that even possible, sandisk's software is even worse than I thought

[PotNoodleTech]

There’s a bit more to my story. Unbeknown to me the teacher concerned received the encrypted USB’s back in the post to then upload to their site. She tried to do this herself and dragged the files from the vault straight to the drag and drop upload area on their site. This resulted with files in neither location!! I called Sandisk support in the hope the data could be retrieved but no luck. You can’t make this stuff up!

 

Oh dear. I made something special for you to cheer you up.