synaesthesia

Yup it's having a global paddy

Not a chance re Sims 8, and no your LEA cannot force you to use SIMS - plenty of laws saying that!

Decent price - plenty of those going (and selling) on Facebook marketplace for nearer the 600 mark thanks to having a GPU that isnt a GT710.

Truenas like it's predecessor freenas will work best without raid cards - in fact they actively won't work with many at all!

Just set up Truenas and found it very indepth with all the options you could ever need - particularly useful for us at the moment with encryption options

Probably why Ryan got bored and uploaded an unfinished version

Sat and watched Schneider's justice league the other day. First 2 hours of the film could have been done in half an hour if they got rid of the pointless slow-mo and awful plotting (or lack of). Second was much improved but I couldn't not just compare it (unfavourably) to both Lord of the Rings and the MCU films and didn't feel it worked at all. Too long farting about with Superman for too little payoff, and no real attachment made to any character. Well, apart from maybe Barry Allen who was easily the best character if you ignore his very rapey copy of Quicksilver's antics. Very human, very vulnerable, probably the only character that properly worked.

And of course then you're liable if the test breaks the equipment (does happen although usually to fridges/freezers)

It's no longer PAT testing under new regs, mostly to take away the "portable" side of things. But indeed for student/staff owned devices you are not responsible for testing them however good practice would suggest staff keep an eye on anything like dodgy chargers where the sheathing has come away as an example and banning further use in school until they're fixed/replaced as that still comes under the safety responsibility of the school (which does slightly contradict the above)

One of the many reasons we gave it the heave-ho - it was bloody awful regardless and the helpdesk was even worse. Far prefer osTicket

Pub? Ah, yes: a meeting place where people attempt to achieve advanced states of mental incompetence by the repeated consumption of fermented vegetable drinks.

Absolute bargain compared to the utter crapstorm that is BT OnePhone!

Nope, otherwise that'd be a nasty security flaw and Ubiquiti don't have any proble..... oh, never mind. But still, no Afraid you'll have to take a drive with a paperclip!

I don't believe many would go further than a DPIA although larger trusts may do, and would likely go on the assurances & guarantees provided by the 3rd parties. Not sure how the liability works there should something happen. I suspect with everything going on currently leadership teams are likely to take "cyber-security" more seriously so it wouldn't surprise me to see much more done in the future to this end.

The likes of Troy Hunt would have a field day just looking at the state of educational software full stop

It's good fun for those with a really short attention span

Indeed, for the reasons mentioned above I can't really say too much more - systems could be locally hosted or in the cloud and the levels of encryption on systems/software outside are own are unlikely to be understood by most of us mortals. I don't think any MIS systems store biometric data but don't have experience with any of the modern cloud based solutions. For data that is stored locally, regardless of whether it's biometric or not schools like anyone are bound to comply with WEEE regulations for electronics disposal and typically (at least ours do) we receive a data destruction certificate for any kit with non-volatile storage. From memory this is physical shredding of devices - not something I agree with unless it's just old e-waste level 500GB hard drives etc but for servers I would expect anyone to at least format & zero drives regardless before this. For re-use/re-deployment outside of schools, same going for business I would expect "military grade" data destruction & certification of such.

CRB & Digital Persona here. No idea about any security assessments having been carried out, however from the school's perspective it's one of the best compromises between security and usability - and I say that even as we start to phase biometrics out and replace with cards; I prefer biometrics. You are correct that it is indeed possible to recreate that data to a degree - not wholly though as it relies on assumptions for the missing data (trying to avoid similarities to the Jurassic Park filling in dino-DNA with frog DNA!). Alternatives at a similar level of security & convenience nearly always involve some other type of biometric data and schools have to manage this carefully. Too much to do in too little time and those lunch queues can get mighty long, particularly with fewer staff and larger cohorts. Pin codes are pointless, swipe/RFID cards probably the best alternative method but unlike a fingerprint, easily stolen (but at the same time, no different to someone's lunch money) Ideal world it will be a multi-factor authentication scenario that remains quick and easy - photo ID card with RFID is probably what I'd think is best. Pro's and con's everywhere - the only real downside to biometrics is the thought of ID theft but the risk of that in a school as a targeted attack is very, very low - near nil regarding security or financial, and manageably small from a safeguarding perspective. Plus the data held by schools on every child is way over and above biometric data and the consent form should identify what any of this is used for.

Loving Musk's tweet. "At least the crater is in the right place!"

This is fine if you just want to use it for very basic stuff, but rules you out for using any advanced features like advertising, post boosting etc as you need to be able to verify your ID.

3CX - love it. Easy to setup, manage and use and just works. Only gripe I have is the mobile app's reliability however can't be sure if this is down to wifi, filtering or other (with everything going on, hasn't been a particularly high priority!)

Gunn may have been able to polish a turd with this one. Not getting hopes up!

Any reason for being constantly a contrarian? You're right - but it increases risk, so the problem is what? Keep the risk low.

There's a million and one online SQL setups you can use i.e. codeacademy which negates the need for that. Frankly at the moment you need to have the least amount of attack surface on your network possible and installing SQL of any flavour increases risk unless it and the clients using it are off-domain.

Not via 365 itself no - sorry this is one of those times where the mailtip and user education needs to be pushed a little more. I believe it's possible with onsite exchange/hybrid systems, but you don't want to be running one of those this day and age!