crc-ict

Hi, As I understand it, the Data Processing Amendment needs to be agreed to. Beware though, the wording calls for it to be agreed by someone with legal responsibility to bind the school to a contract, so I would advise you don't do it without consulting your LM/Headteacher. I got a printout of the agreement signed by the HT and Chair of Governors as authority to accept. HIPAA I believe is a US regulation and is not relevant to us in the UK. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the suggestions all. CeX is a good shout, never thought of that one. Also repartitioning larger ones too. I know it's a rubbish solution, but it's just a box ticking exercise for a very small-scale use for a short time.

They are off domain devices for very occasional use as machines that can be borrowed. Just need a simple way of getting bitlocker working on them without relying on passwords. Also thinking that will be an easy thing for unfamiliar staff to get the hang of, tell them it's basically the 'key' for the laptop. I know it's a poor solution, but it's only short term and for occasional use.

Hello, Odd question here, but does anyone know where I could get hold of a few very low capacity SD cards cheaply? I'm talking super low, even 16MB ones I've seen in the past would do. Just looking to use it for Bitlocker keys for a few old laptops that I need to get encrypted as a short term measure. I want to use very low capacity cards so they don't get used to store data (we've banned flash drives etc). Grateful for any ideas. If any of the suppliers on Edugeek have got any old stashes they would be willing to off-load in my direction that would be great! Looking for half a dozen. Thanks Chris.

No problems with Namecheap for me either - really good pricing for the renewals I needed, less than half what Fasthosts or 1&1 were asking.

Can't see a point myself - surely everything would just end up being marked 'Official'? I don't see anything in a school that would warrant 'Secret' or above? So everything would be marked in the one category.

Yes, we have been advised by the County legal team that any fundraising or promotional material (eg for holiday clubs etc) will require consent. However, I believe this is due to the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) and not GDPR, and so applies to electronic communications only. IANAL though, so I don't know what the state of play is for distributing these types of material on paper.

I see your point there, but even a high-cost solution like Virtru will only provide that transparent security on the sending side (unless your recipient also happens to be using Virtru). It's all very well being able to encrypt an e-mail with a click of a button from your end, but it's not so good if your recipient cannot or will not accept having to go through a third-party portal or install third-party plugins to be able able read the message. Our decision making was based on the very small actual real-world risk of an email being intercepted by some unknown man-in-the-middle (especially as most gmail goes using TLS anyway), against the much more realistic risk of an e-mail being sent to the wrong person in error - something that solutions like Virtru do nothing to prevent as there is no further authentication once it has been delivered. So we couldn't justify spending thousands annually to mitigate a very small risk when it wouldn't help with a realistically much larger risk.

Virtru is interesting to deal with. You have to deal with them through online meetings, and they will make you have a preliminary 'meeting' with a pre-screening person before you can even speak to a salesperson. They are very reluctant to tell you pricing - it took three online meetings including a full demo before I got a price out of them. When you get the price, the reason becomes apparent - it is VERY expensive. They also only work in 'office hours' in US Eastern Time, so don't open until about 2pm UK time. Based on that, we decided to not implement e-mail encryption, covering GDPR with policies to say that no personal data should be sent in an e-mail, unless inside an attached, passworded and encrypted Office document or protected PDF. A pain in the butt for users, but given the very high (annual) ost of the encryption software, we couldn't justify any other approach financially.

With the exception of certain medical information, we were advised that all of the pupil record should be passed on to the receiving school (or LA as described by the IRMS from @markberry's post). In the event of it being required, it would then be obtained from the current holder, by court requisition if necessary. We were told that retaining data 'just in case' of future claims or lawsuits were not justification to keep copies of files that are passed on.

I would look into the GPRS units with a SIM card. I looked into connecting the card machine via broadband for my father's business, and getting the PCI-DSS compliance check is a nightmare without special equipment, security settings etc. For them, it was going to be so much hassle and expense that they went back to using it dial-up through PSTN. You can't just hook a card machine into any-old Wifi or internet connection.

That looks like a really interesting feature, but unfortunately isn't in GAFE, it's only available in the Enterprise version

We looked at Virtru (https://www.virtru.com/gmail-security/) which looks really good and very easy to use/implement. Unfortunately, it's very expensive (annually) and you have to jump through a number of hoops with online meetings and demos before you can find out the pricing. We liked the system, but the investment was vetoed by the powers that be due to the cost.

We are having some debate here amongst those of us working on GDPR. Does anyone know (@GrumbleDook perhaps?), do we need to publish our data map on the school website? We have been advised that we do, but aren't seeing any requirement to do so elsewhere. Thanks Chris.

Indeed, agree with you there, especially with restaurant chains. With the continued march of rising prices and static wages, who can afford to regularly go out and spend £50-60 just for a meal for two and a couple of drinks? It's not affordable, and in a lot of cases, isn't good value for money either.

There have been a few stories about rather extreme rules at that particular school over the time. As a parent, it sounds to me like they are rather too big for their boots and if I had kids there, I'd be looking to get them moved elsewhere ASAP!

My daughter came downstairs yesterday to tell me about the 'cool' game console the had been talking about on her favourite YouTube channel - called a Game Boy! Got a big smile inside when I went to the cupboard and pulled out my original Game Boy to show her and let her play on. I love sharing things from my childhood with my kids, and it's not often you find something that they still think is cool!

Yeah, I remember by old Epson that could print onto discs. What a party trick that was!

In my MGF, sun shining, roof down. Getting to the open road, putting my foot down, holding on to that lower gear for just a bit longer than normal and enjoying the throaty rasp of the exhaust as I head for the horizon.

Doesn't it all come down to what you are actually using the CCTV for? ie. whether it is intended as a preventative tool to help prevent incidents, or just a tool to help apportion guilt once something has happened? This would need to be defined in your policy and what the justification is for having the system. Personally, I think monitoring is important - surely CCTV it is more valuable (for example) if it enables an intruder to be seen and tackled before they do something, rather than just enabling you to identify the perpetrator after some harm or crime has been done?

Years ago I used to have some adaptors that would convert AA rechargable batteries into a C size. Don't know if you can still get hold of them, but if so, might be an option to use those with some lithium* AAs EDIT: yes, they are still available: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Energy-SistemTM-Battery-NNaturaTM-Converter/dp/B000U57Y4A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1518181980&sr=8-2&keywords=AA+to+C+adaptor&dpID=51t8vKPx2JL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch *meaning the Lithium disposable-type batteries (eg these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Energizer-Ultimate-Lithium-AA-Batteries/dp/B000IWW1G6) not Li-Ion rechargable which are a different voltage altogether.

The dismantling is reasonably safe as long as you are careful. The danger with the 18650 cells these things are made up from is that the whole outer case of the cell is the negative pole. This means that on the top, you only have a narrow gap between positive and negative, so it is very easy to short out between the case (negative) and the positive contact on the top. The bigger danger with repurposing laptop battery cells is the type of cells used - generally laptop batteries are built using 'ICR' chemistry Li-Ion cells, which have a high energy density and are cheap, but at the expense of relatively low current capability and inherent instability of their chemistry when abused, or charged/discharged at high currents. These ICR cells are the ones that get Li-Ion the 'bad name' and reputation for being dangerous. For that reason, I doubt laptop cells would be suitable for an e-bike battery as they would not be safe with the levels of discharge current required. The general laptop cells can only be safely discharged at 1C, so a 2500mAh cell can only safely discharge 2.5A for example, whereas a more dedicated high-drain cell like an IMR can sustain currents of 20-30A depending on spec. More info on types etc here: https://batterybro.com/blogs/18650-wholesale-battery-reviews/18880255-battery-chemistry-finally-explained

I got straight back on and rode the thing home after the off. It's not an outright fear of riding that has made me decide to call it a day again - it's more of a mental thing. I decided to quit 'big bikes' last May and sold my Deauville - this was just after buying a house and the weight of responsibility on my shoulders led me to think that keeping it and keeping on riding wasn't a sensible idea. I kept my 125 scooter to use for local errands etc and not for 'fun' - using it more like a big, lazy man's pushbike really. I'd had a bit of a hard time getting to love the Deauville anyway and while I enjoyed it whilst I was riding, it was always an effort to summon the motivation to go out. I then bought an MGF with some of the money from the Deauville and had fun with that over the summer. As autumn came along, the weather was a bit cold for the MGF and I found myself getting into the scooter. Although they were sporadic I started to really enjoy my scooter trips - more than I had enjoyed the Deauville. This then developed in my mind until I saw the maxi scooter advertised in mid-January and convinced myself that a big scooter was maybe the way to go, and was a way to get back into riding for pleasure but addressing the bits of the Deauville that I didn't like so much (weight, high CoG, gears etc). Now, having had the off with the scooter, it has brought right back into the forefront of my mind the thoughts and the reasoning for why I decided to give up bikes in the first place. And unfortunately nothing has changed in that - it still seems like a really irresponsible thing to do with a family depending on me. Seeing the family's response to the accident has also left me feeling it's not fair to put them through the worry of me continuing to ride just for fun. And the thing that cements the decision for me most of all: I tried to visualise how I would feel if the accident had been worse, if I had been seriously injured could I have sat in the hospital bed, put my hand on my heart and said that riding was worth it, and that I didn't regret going out that day? The answer to that question for me was no, without hesitation. With that knowledge in mind, I don't think I can ever ride a bike just as a pastime again. There will be times that I will miss it, that's for certain. But deep down, I know that if the worst happened, I would miss my life with my family much more, and the rewards of riding aren't, for me, sufficient to put that at risk unnecessarily.

I briefly restarted my riding career a couple of weekends back when I bought a Piaggio Xevo 400 maxi scooter. Had a bad start when it stranded me at a petrol station half-way home from picking it up when the immobiliser antenna decided to die leaving me with a bike that wouldn't start Got that fixed then last weekend, my first proper ride out with it, locked up the back end under braking (it was wet, might have been diesel/oil down??) and came off the thing. Smashed up the front fairing and leg shield pretty good - £500 in parts alone - not to say anything about my right-side, especially my ankle So that's it, I'm off bikes again. Didn't enjoy my first experience of crashing, and have no desire to repeat it even if I did have the £500 for the parts to fix the damn thing anyway.

Watched Contagion last night on DVD. Really not a good one to watch with all the colds and flu going around at the moment Scary stuff actually though, the power something like that could have.