dwhyte85

When I first started I felt like I was drowning... the sheer amount of work to do and the catching up that was needed. I think firstly, ironing out my LMs expectations and meeting them was the first goal - I explained the current situation wasn't great and that I could only hit one area at a time, we just don't have the manpower to get everything done at once. I do spend alot of time doing things at home I don't have time to do in the day but I have confidence in my fellow techs, I can delegate tasks knowing they will get done. Maybe you can start to delegate to your tech? I understand you don't have huge amounts of time but if it's a means to an end maybe he'll put in a few extra hours, I know alot of people on here will argue that you shouldn't bother giving time outside of work but I disagree if it makes your life easier in the long run. Since i've started we've 'fixed' alot and got a lot done, I couldn't have done it on my own - had to get the techs in that frame of mind, they were fed-up because it was a situation like yours. Wouldn't say you're rubbish... you feel threatened and you're worried - i'd imagine most NMs are a little bit worried at least - I know I am most of the time! If you have a continual amount of tickets... has to be a reason for the tickets - see whether documentation given to staff in the first instance to help or whether a solution at your end could stop these tickets? Checking for trends in your tickets can help... e.g., if one person complains YouTube needs the newer Adobe plug-in... you can guess that the rest of the staff will soon ask.

grrr The sad part is we don't let them use poor passwords, we enforce complexity... it doesn't stop it being a crud password... even with cycling passwords 90 days, you get variations of the same password. I don't let staff eat over laptops but they still do it... point is, policies only do so much... taking the initiative and adding an extra layer of security isn't exactly a big ask and IMO something they should have considered - I'm sure they deal with enough teachers to understand why. Why risk the data?

On a school Network it's slightly different to the world wide web... not a fair comparison. A child within school would be quickly spotted, some spotty little so - so could be doing this behind proxys/Tor guessing passwords - blocking IPs and account lockouts help, but... I don't want them getting to the point they could do that. The fact it's unlikely isn't the point, it's the principal of the web being slightly more open than my network and far harder to find who could be doing things, if they can't get to the teacher URL... they couldn't do any damage. EDIT: Understand your point localzuk, whether or not you'll change my POV is another matter. For the money paid this needs to be something complete OR maybe we needed a better demonstration...

It doesn't matter how much you enforce a policy, with AD and paper based policies stating secure passwords... you will get a few with a guessable password, if a system contains live data which is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands it needs that extra layer... whether the URL is obfuscated or unobvious... it needs that extra layer for the very reason that we can't see what a member of staffs password is through AD only that it meets criteria. EDIT: We had been advised to get an upgrade to 100mb connection, this was subsidised... our LA really wants us to have SLG... or should I say SIMS learning webpart... nothing more than an plug-in.

I think moreover the school want to pay for something that is 100% ready, the point being IF it was hosted would it be secure enough, kids can guess passwords, it needs an added layer of protection to protect kids from seeing/fiddling with live data. This is where both the school and I disagree with your point of 'It is all down to how you set up sharepoint - it isn't a SIMS SLG related issue really.' - if this is fully hosted the responsibility then falls with Capita... Flipside, we'd pay for a setup that costs a fair chunk... we expect it to be to our expectations, not a generic install - as far as we're aware this is fully setup on your server, not just the webparts. The issue of low bandwidth... sort of agree then again, our HT connects via ISDN, not everyone is up to date.. it's about allowing access to the masses, let everyone have a chance to access... we were shown slides of graphs, pie charts as well as text. Accessibility... these are things that Capita should take care of, graphs/reports and the like need this consideration too. We are paying for a full service, the install should cover these things... infact, accesibility & HCI in general should be covered pre-dev.

Moodle Add-Ons exist for this? As Studywiz have gone into administration [again?] we could do with a total overhaul and your suggestion works out better for us, TS/Citrix & Moodle sounds like a plan...

Mortstar: Do you know cost involved?

I didn't get names, I'm not that important :-) I honestly think the guy did not want to talk about the technical side of things. He tried to 'management' speak me when I asked about how the service will create accounts or could they link to existing AD links, I don't mind being told I need to find out or I can e-mail it... I do mind when I'm fobbed off with some tosh answer. My main concern is that we're having to buy into a fairly big system (WSS/Moss) for solely showing these webparts, a lot of cost is concerned and as we're upgrading our conn for this... it seems like a lot of cost for something that will get minimal use - if any [of course, I am aware of the pressure being put on us to provide one]. My HT rightly asked about security of logins, they tried to say we could got he RSA route which is a good... but not practical with teachers, the concern is they will change passwords to something obvious even with a policy in place and a leet hacksaw manage to get into the systems and amend live data. My concerns are: Reasonable server spec required for this, should it be ran off of same server [if we didn't go hosted route]. Security of teacher login area - .htaccess possible and I change this on a daily basis and post to teachers? No matter how many policies in place someone will have a guessable password... data needs to be truly secure. Accessibility... we're not all as lucky to have 20/20 vision Consideration for low-bandwidth... some people may be on dial up still, if they have a connection at all... Cost! This will severely impact any buying I do this year! I can see the awesomeness of the idea but... this could be easily a weekly updated set of contents rather than a direct conn to Capita if hosted, or directly accessing DB, furthermore... CommandReporter could get enough information to suffice? I really doubt parents will be checking daily on progress

We had a fairly poor demonstration from some Capita bods today, lady was very nice and trying to be helpful... some other chap was with her who was less than helpful and trying to cut me off at every question asked >_< I don't think SLT were too impressed either. Do any other options exist?

I say alot, it get's misunderstood by people with no ICT knowledge and ignored.

Have to agree with Witch, if the job appeals for more than just money then go for it. £300.00 is a lot of money but if it is going to give you meltdown from learning loads of new systems with the worry of probation period and economic climate - you might not have such a great time. Personally I'm headstrong and would just go for it, but the adult in me is trying to say be sensible and weigh up pros and cons

I want a quiet life & I'm in education, how do you get one of those? wagnerk has hit the nail on the head with experience.

I haven't done it but have setup an Ubuntu box for this very reason to connect to my Server 2008 R2 server. I think this is what you're after: Hosting iSCSI Targets on Ubuntu Linux - have to sign up. I originally tried with my netgear readynas... let's just say it didn't like it!

Webmin will do alot of what you want and wont require a license (thus a bit cheaper) - i know servelocity do that as standard but not sure if some of the named companies others do.

:'( I wanted this to destroy termite http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll248/CGUK_photo/bfg1.jpg

Shameless plug rather than factual account!?!

Bodhost for price, just don't break it - takes ages to get fixed and they tried to charge me :'(

By the same guy who made Brasseye, will definitely ruffle a few feathers!

PSN: GingerManBearPig I play MW2... badly & sometimes MAG.

We give e-mail addresses, we delegate control to HoDs and the co-ordinator. We used to give just webmail access, most of ours never touch the VLE.. much like the teachers.

I have 6 also that could be distributed in the sameway, russdev - if you want to add these to the pool of tickets PM me.

Compression of the backup folder will cause issues with BackupExec, or at least compressed folders used to on BE? If we had a major outage, had to restore to a new folder on a new server... it used to be the case that compressed folders didn't always work once restored, albeit this wasn't SIMS.. it was pharmaceutical stuff

SIMS told me to use compression on the server Not going to happen! Thanks for posting tool

If you code, you'd know. Getting back to the original post... A [R.A] trojan... will not have quite the same calibre of code as a RAT and will be absolute no use to OP as it will be a copy and paste-fest. They are not interchangeable, they are for different purposes and despite having the same acronym aren't the same. Sub7 was never considered a remote access tool... it's programmed badly in VB6, c++ offers some amount of interoperability dependant on libraries used. I don't know how much code you've seen so I can't comment on what you do or don't know, if you've ever used Sub7/BO2k/Netbus you'd understand why they're not really RATs but trojans, although the code for BO2K is pretty helpful as it's well written (and avail. on sourceforge) and has been branded as a RAT now - although it was not written for that purpose. Stating what I know as a coder, having used both trojans & RATs and my knowledge of new/old trojan & RAT sources... Anyway, Mac_Shinobi - if you need any clarification drop me a PM.

People sometimes call trojans RATs but they're never called remote access trojans... a trojan is assumed to be something that is used to remotely gain access to a system... by deception. Remote access trojans... are simply trojans and nothing to do with RATs, they're different. In the olden days when everyone had dial up connections direct to the net, no router in-between RATs could be used effectively to do the same as a trojan. I guess in principal it could be the same now... if the user had a Win98 box, dial-up/usb modem attached & no AV or security software at all... Rat: Used for remote administration of a system, e.g., let's close down a machine without walking over to it... you could consider the use of WMI in a VB script a remote access tool. Purposely installed within a LAN to help do tasks that can only normally be done at a machine. Trojan: Used to gain entry to a remote system, often bound to other software, crypted (think themida but cruder and unknown by AV) and installed by deceiving the user. The code maybe similar in principal... but then again any amount of source code could be used for bad things, infact many of the education monitoring systems that exist use fundamentals of these tools... bad word monitoring (e.g, kids typing swear words into Word) that then capture an image of the profanity... work off of a keylogger, screen capture & sending the picture to a 'server'. :-)