TechMonkey

Luckily it was for furlough so they weren't on site or internal. You can force accounts to re-auth for internal or laptops working off site.

Just finished The Order on Netflix. Interesting concept and didn't turn too Teenage angsty.

What's the chance someone else's life is on the line? If they are being used by first aiders very possible. In a stressful high pressure moment do you want to try and work an app and hope signal is OK or do you want to press a button and know it is going to work? If it is used in emergency procedures you need to plan on that chance in a million as when it all goes TU things tend to all go wrong and that is when things just need to work. Did you never watch London's Burning? If keeping things charged and replacing batteries is your concern then mobile phones, especially cheap ones, are not the answer.

Radios can have private channels as well. Some of the systems you can create party calls, so it selectively sends to only certain handsets. Concern with no wifi would be down to data plans, are the school handing out mobile phones? If not then the member of staff is using their own data plan and what if they have run out that month? Also can you guarantee all staff have mobile signal on site? Add to that in the event of a power outage your local mobile tower could be down also. Someone covering? Just hand them a radio and they are ready. If you use an app, you have to get them to download the app, probably sign up, show them how to use it. App is a nice low cost method that I can see working in certain defined uses, but I wouldn't like to rely on it.

Exactly. The nightly emails were highlighted in our last inspection as a very good thing the inspectors hadn't seen. I doubt we are the only schools using it but it is obviously not widespread enough for it not to be exceptional. Fortinet Reporting, which could be scheduled, looked very interesting. You could build reports using widgets. But in the end we don't do that much reporting, Safeguarding is the big one and to have it readily there without having to build and kept current, it is a massive plus.

3 hosts with around 46 VMs. Some multi use servers, so security does card access and some other access programs. Only because it would be a waste to run some of the programs on a single server.

One anecdote against another, when people suggest sites that need blocking I have generally found Smoothwall has it blocked already, either due to the content filtering or their filter lists. I guess it depends on the priority. In a school which is worse, a false positive that you need to open up or a false negative you then need to explain to parents why little Jane saw that explicit content?

Correct. A page could have a url or http://www.safeandhappypage.com/goodcontent and be full of nasties. Sophos would see http://www.safeandhappypage.com/nastystuff as the SSL cert will allow it to see the sub pages. Smoothwall will look at the content and block on nasties within the page. This also helps if a page is taken over, hijacked or later changes use. URL filtering is reactive, as you either need to guess intent by words in the URL (the classic Scunthorpe or Sussex issue) or by someone going through can classifying it. I prefer content aware as I personally feel it gives better coverage and is a massive benefit in this dynamic content age, though it can be a bit over sensitive for example if an EduGeek thread talks about something considered naughty. EDIT: You do have to be careful as some suppliers say they are content filters when actually what they mean is that they filter web content, not they filter the actual content. Barracuda were particularly slippery on this, saying they were a content filter until I laid out the exact case of picking out terms in a page.

I've not moved from Smoothwall so can't make any recommendations, but the popular choices seem to be Sophos XG, Securly, Fortinet, Opendium and a smattering of Barracuda. We looked at all but Securly. My rough reviews from demos, probing and speaking to others are: Sophos XG Pretty. Just as bad at reporting, if not worse, than Smoothwall such that everyone buys a third party reporting engine to bolt on. Still a maturing product so some features seem flaky or under development. Filter is not content aware. Just had a big Injection bug found that had been exploited. Fortinet A firewall with some filtering options. Does what it needs to, more of a help than an actual product for filtering. Filter is not content aware. Not very extensive filters provided Opendium Ugly as sin but a very impressive product. Some really fancy features but just packaged up as if it were still the 90s. Content aware filter Barracuda Expensive. Nice package, very easy to use. Expensive! Filter is not content aware. What it comes down to ultimately is what you are after. The big thing seems to be a lot of these devices are Firewalls that have some filtering and also how geared towards Education they are. This directly leads to how much work you are going to have do. My big concern was the lack of content scanning, URL scanning is a very reactive method especially as people don't label the naughty sites as clearly as they used to I fear I may have to lose this ability eventually with HTTPS tightening further and further. Eventually what I may do is get a second box for Firewall capabilities and stick with Smoothwall for filtering, as that is what they do exceptionally well.

As ever, depends. Does the school support training, so give them the time and direction to do it? Is the training worthwhile, relevant and quality? Without the support, or if they are expected to do all the training in their own time, I doubt there will be much take up. If the training is seen as a enforced extra, poor or irrelevant then I doubt there will be much take up. Vice versa, I can see it being a positive if your team do. You can see who is progressing, give them direction and provide proof to management of who is doing what is necessary that is maybe linked to targets or pay scale progression.

Most of the cost of a house though is the land. No amount of automation will solve that issue.

Expired 23rd Nov.

They must see some value that they can split and sell off. Even if it is customer base. That would be why they haven't got the price they want previously, everyone else knows that there is no value in teh products, just what they can spin off or sell later.

What an odd bunch of companies in that portfolio. I know equity firms like diversity to mitigate downturns but that is very eclectic!

Or enable Mobility Print and use these instructions https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/mobility-print/mobility-print-devices/topics/en/client-setup-macos.html

Totally agree with you both. I had a long conversation with a Governor that is an electrical engineer and has a deep interest in IT, data security and Disaster Recovery and as he worked in the oil industry he had an interesting viewpoint. It was a very good discussion, though I had to keep pointing out that we were a school not an oil platform! The issue is a Governor directly telling staff what they can and cannot do. I remember in a previous life a head getting quite frustrated that they had to edit Governor observations as they were commenting on teaching and operational matters, when all they were there to do was comment on the generalities and resources, not rate the teacher or their teaching. A two page report was cut down to a paragraph one time.

This is the biggest FUBAR here. The Governor can make the suggestion but can't not implement or enforce it. But as others have said, just ensure your MDM can check certain criteria, like the device has a password and/or is encrypted. If using InTune you can even be mean and not let copy and paste work!

One of my fav Youtube cooking guys did He seems excited about it

Very, as well as the sound of any tape based game loading. I used to have that sound as my ringtone but lost the file when I changed phones. May have to acquire it again.

I got a Fossil Gen 5 that is on offer and I like it. Feel better about spending the offer price than full price or going crazy and getting a Samsung watch.

I miss that sound!

I was about to go off on one about why have another collab product when Google and M365 do it perfectly well. But as it is an IDE I would be all for it (for levels of for it where all policies and laws are followed) as it means you don't have to setup sandboxes, deploy an IDE and the pupil can work on what they are used to at home. Might be a bit pricey at $1000 a year. But that might be worth it for you never having to deal with the hassle again. EDIT: Ohh apparently Schools get a 25% discount as well. So only $750, around £500.

Gateway is a good call. Though would expect it to affect all or nothing.

Was someone being a bit silly with the fire juice?

Definitely sounds like a VLAN/DNS issue. Could it be you don't have listeners to both DCs so the few that have gone to the secondary are having issues? EDIT: Have you looked at the Switch config to ensure the VLANS are setup the same? Could it be a certain switch? It may look random but all be going back to the same switch from different locations?