msi_school

Good morning, does anyone have a CCTV DPIA I could have a look at, or a good resource for writing one? I am struggling to get our SLT to justify CCTV beyond "but we want it".

I hadn't had a patch issue for about 10 years, I normally test the patches for a week on my home servers and test devices at work before doing the roll out and even these machines have not had a patch related issue for years. Then we got hit with the DC reboot issue and because I had not rolled back a patch for so long I didn't decline it on the WSUS server and got hit again the next day.

The same thing as I do with all of my computers... Try and take over the world!

I was referring to the person who asked you as a DPO not you, I apologise for not being clearer. Everyone who touched data should be looking for ways to minimise its use and distribution, but a DPO should have a better understanding.

I was going to defend the original person who asked if this is possible because it is sensible to look at all data users can access and question if this is appropriate however, I then noticed that the original requester was a DPO and they should know better.

While I see the need for devices of various types and multi function rooms, I can not see a replacement for a standard IT suite with desktop computers for teaching COmputer Science and ICT.

I used to use WD reds but they started to use shingled data tracks https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/14/wd-red-nas-drives-shingled-magnetic-recording/ these can be used in RAID arrays but the technology is inherently slower and can case issues especially when rebuilding data

I put the Feb patches on my home lab on Friday and no issues so far

We are seeing this as well on http://www.youtube links but not m.youtube links except www. sometimes works as well especially if you are testing links and have clicked a lot recently

The EU is great for overcoming plays like this from multi national companies because the national politicians can use the European ones as cover whilst secretly supporting them.

I have a friend who does massive Wireless setups for supermarket chains and writes courses for CCNA and he advises not to do any throttling on the Wireless, if you need it do it upstream. You want the data to travel over the air as fast as possible because it is a shared medium and the wireless kit is generally a bit gutless so it bogs the traffic down even more.

We use self hosted SupportPal for a number of departments, we have found it easy to use for all users and it is cheap however, I did feel a little cheated with the set up we purchased. There is some config required for SSL, email config, custom reports etc and I thought for the reasonable price of £100 I would let someone who does this every day rather than use my rather modest Linux skills. Unfortunately this does not cover the configuration so I got to flex my Linux skills in the end nothing was too difficult but this is the difficult part of the set up.

Occasionally a power cut or other unplanned shutdown will really do a number on the computer, I hit the powercutton an a 4 way once on my test network and it totally hosed the AD before and since I have never seen anything worse than needing to run scan disk.

I am always concerned that if it is important enough to not be an email or just walking away is a SMS system going to be suitable?

Schools can be hidebound but so can all types of organisation just because someone is working in the private sector does not magically make them more reasonable, /r/sysadmin has some great examples of this. I have been known to have go at teachers in specific and in general but they are no better or worse than any other profession. I have problems with finance forms and can not work out the difference between a Cheque Requisition and a Purchase Request and this is probably because really I don't care this is the same for the staff when I am going on about password policies or email retention.

The issue for me is that they seem to think is is vital when they are berating me for it not working, I am happy that it is integral to the endeavor or that it is trivial but you can't have it both ways. I work in a support role and I understand this I will happily deliver what the school wants but this has to be laid out and supported.

Be very careful of dynamically expanding virtual disks, you will run out of space at an inconvenient time at least with fixed size you know where you are.

I enjoyed it after the slow start, but I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a fan of the original.

One of my first acts at my current job three years ago was to implement the blocking of writing to USB, staff can still read from them. This was very unpopular in concept but in practise the staff generally used them to read from far more that to write to. This coupled with the fact that all our teaching staff have VPN connected laptops allowed us to move fairly painlessly from writable removable devices. We still allow removable devices to be read from which is a security hole but we judge this to be far smaller than email or various web based vectors but I could probably be able to remove this now with little fuss. I would like to be able to use USB myself occasionally when a student device has decided to not talk to the network after a student has done their work without saving as happens about one a term here but other than that we don't miss them. There is some sort of strange compulsion in users to expose their data to as much risk as possible, I don't understand why they seem to insist on saving data in one location preferably one that can go through the washing machine.

Things change every day in education, new methods, new processes, new courses and new subject to name a few. When the IT department make a change you get push back which is why this needs SLT support, it won't make the noise stop but it will make the staff use the new system.

We do all of the above, my favorite method is intel nuc style pcs with a vesa mount which can them be velcroed or cable tied to the screen mount preferably on a ledge and a kensington key lock to act as secondary suspension if it falls.

Unfortunately I don't use this system, when I did suggest it it was decided that it would be too difficult for the students to remember there IDs even if we put them on their ID cards. Which is a potential weakness although I get plenty of students who cant log on to the computer or Office 365 everyday using their cohort+initial+surname. For email the users primary email address can be different from their username in Office 365.

Modern schools and in fact any large organisation have so many linked processes, SSOs and the like that using a users name as their unique identifier is madness in my school of 1500 students we have about 2 name changes a terms due to all sorts of reasons and they are always complex to carry out. If instead of using the users name we used a unique identifier such as a cohort year plus a random string this would be resolved. The users display names, email alias & etc can then be set to the users chosen name without breaking any of these complex interactions.

These are great after the initial set up, the DT tech at my last school did one for me and as she was only 5 foot tall she did get stuck once.

I threaten to use their lower school photo if they don't provide a picture, surprising how well this works!