pete

The connection is attempting to go through your/a web proxy. Have you got exceptions set (say *.yourinternaldomain.whatever.it.is) so hosts don't attempt to send internal-only requests to the proxy? Or if they need to go through the proxy, that you've told it "don't require auth, https interception or filtering on X to Y 'cos it's mission-critical".

Given it's trivial* to set up, I can't see a good reason not to use HTTPS. Especially since Google has been using it as a lightweight ranking tool since ~2014. *for values of "having picked a sensible hosting provider"

eSchools isn't necessarily just a school website. Depending on which package you buy it can be parental communications and/or VLE as well. If a school has bought the parental comms or VLE (homework/attainment) options then it's holding personal data. If you're using HTTP-based auth for that over the Internet you're not adequately securing personal data (certs cost very little - there's no good excuse not to use one). This doesn't mean the OP's school is doing that, just that a 30-second poke around a random selection of primary websites using eSchools reveals a fair amount using the add-on bits.

So reading that letter.. Does the primary currently use https://primaryschoolname.eschools.co.uk to access eSchools? If you do (and HTTPS works) you don't need to do anything. However, if the primary uses http://primaryschoolname.region.sch.uk to access eschools insecurely (no current cert) they're very likely breaking data protection legislation (judging by how eschools can be used) and yes, you need to get a certificate on there.

Ah, so blatant milking of customers rather than selling you an EV wildcard cert or anything fancy? A single-domain cert is ~£7/yr from Namecheap. I suspect eSchools may charge you £88 for installing it though.

I'd ask eSchools why they haven't integrated Let's Encrypt (like nearly every other hosting provider) Can you post the text of the letter (the bit describing the certificate and the issue) so we can see what they're trying to sell?

We don't use Reading Cloud (I think), but we do use hosted eclipse.net and in the last couple of weeks performance has been terrible. There's no apparent rhyme or reason as to why. Everything's whitelisted (HTTPS interception, content, auth, AV etc) and the issue presents itself in IE, Chrome, Edge and Firefox and we've (yet again) gone through their laundry list of things we've already done. Symptoms are that you can't save changes to a resource or borrower and you'll see "Service call failure retry 0-5" in IE (status bar bottom left). Their support haven't been terribly helpful, but noted that the subdomains https://api-resource.microlibrarian.net and https://resource.microlibrarian.net are related to the issue. We whitelist at the domain (microlibrarian.net) level and the first subdomain (api-resource.microlibrarian.net) resolves correctly. The second subdomain (https://resource.microlibrarian.net) will occasionally throw up a 404 (anecdotally 1 in 5 times) but mostly times out whether going through or proxy as a student, staff member, completely unfiltered or via a 4G connection on a mobile phone. Downforeveryoneorjustme.com concurrs with this. I've added the affected subdomain to our external status page (on uptimerobot.com which is free for 50 checks) to run overnight so we have data for the support call in the morning. So far it's been unavailable for 47 minutes (I added it 47 minutes ago).

Autumn 2018 apparently, according to the last roadmap I saw.

^ I did ponder that, but I'm wary of creating an every-increasing list of ailments. We also collect information like "last had a tetanus booster on $date" if the kid participates in things like sailing club and DoE.

So we're testing SIMS Parent App Lite functionality, specifically regarding updating medical information. On our test (teacher-parents) users, we've found we can't enter medical information that doesn't meet a pre-canned (asthma, for example) option. If we choose "Other" and then use the free text field at the bottom to give details of the condition, the only data appearing in the data collection sheet (and imported into SIMS) is a medical condition called "Other" - the details aren't transferred. Has anyone else noticed similar issues? Are we doing it wrong?

We use the "email only contract", though that was very laxly enforced for years and they would happily answer phone queries. At some point in the last year or so they actually enforced the contract terms and (speaking to the helldesk person) it turns out I was one of many customers that he had to break that to. We've never had a SIMS audit. Do you mean an external auditor is checking SIMS for data hygience, security etc or Capita giving it some TLC, or......? I usually get a letter from Capita around Easter time saying "We think you've got X number of kids and use these modules, is that correct? If so, the cost will be £X for the coming year. If not, let us know and we'll amend the invoice".

We have one of these: Trunking & Conduit Cutter ..and it makes the job go much quicker. The only caveat is you have to be a bit careful with mini-trunking. If you haven't got some step drill bits, it's worth investing in those for drilling clean holes in plastic.

If you're applying the disclaimer *just* to confidential emails that require a disclaimer *and* you're putting it at the start of the email, it might be useful in court. As it is, people are: 1) Sticking it at the bottom (where no-one reads it) 2) Applying it to every email, regardless of confidentiality and so the disclaimer is diluted because "Hey Bob, fancy a pint after work?" is (according to the disclaimer) just as confidential as "Dear Mrs Biggins, here's your medical test results". Further reading (scroll down): https://www.out-law.com/en/topics/tmt--sourcing/email/email-notices-and-email-footers/

I blame whoever necro'd a thread from September 2017 in June 2018.

We've used Apple TVs with AirParrot (~£6/device) to good effect in our science labs. However, I'd also make them dig up the floor / run a fresh VGA during the summer hols.

PaperCut UK support/sales is based at Selectec: https://www.papercut.com/products/mf/buy/europe/ in my dealings with them they were very helpful.

Try Dive? (scuba)

What does it say on the side of the known-good cable?

The contract(s) between the organisation(s) and the school should have appropriate language regarding data sharing and probably forms a data-sharing agreement between the two parties for the purpose of the trip. They'll very likely have a privacy policy available as well. TLDR: Read the contract small print. Follow up with company if unsatisfied.

Yes. Note the "no new sign-ups" caveat in the part you quoted. We're grandfathered into an option that they no longer offer to new customers.

You could zip it twice, stash one zip in a secure location for accountability purposes and with a password known/available to SLT and return another to the user that's encrypted with their password. Accountability / spot checks to see if people are doing dumb / unlawful / malicious things with the data they have access to. If Fred's sending totallylegit.zip to someone externally and chooses a decent password, short of building a rackmount stuffed with Nvidia cards it's hard to determine what he actually emailed.

We also publish SIMS via RemoteApp using SSO and use 2FA to make it more robust.

Well, you'd agree. You are affecting it, just in a positive way by firing feckless individuals with no grasp of their safeguarding responsibilities.

Spotted the speculation and hoped it wouldn't happen.

OK, so a SQL database called "si" is consuming 700GB of data. Do you know what that database is used for (the software that stores data in it) and how quickly it's grown historically (say last year)? Has usage changed this year that would account for the increased size? You can see what's using the most space by launching SQL Management Studio, right-clicking on the database and going to Reports > Disk Usage by Table and then sorting by the data column, but without an idea about what it should look like I'd contact the company who tends to deal with it. Do they work under a support contract?