Techie2000

Hi everyone, I'm just wondering if anyone has guidance on removing/ minimising the amount of hoax emails and click bait that seems to come through. We seem to receive around 30-40 emails per day (some of which are inappropriate like dating sites) but have noticed they come from randomly generated aliases each time. They do go to our junk box but was wondering if anyone had managed to stop them completely? TIA

I have and randomly nothing is blocked or being filtered This makes me think it is a certificate issue, but the HTTPS decryption exception should have resolved this. Randomly when tested on our old firewall, it works without any changes required!

Hi, We've recently got ourselves a Sophos XG but have run into a couple of issues with BT Lancashire's ISL client refusing to connect. We've added an HTTPS decryption exception for the hostname ^([A-Za-z0-9.-]*\.)?btlancashire\.co.uk/ but without any luck. Randomly, we added the same exception for ^[A-Za-z0-9.-]*\.islonline.net and tried their ISL Tester and it connected with 'Network OK.' Has anyone run into this issue or got any suggestions? Many thanks in advance.

2 mins after posting this I installed the cert and it worked!

Has anyone experienced issues with their Sophos XG and Redstor backup? I've added an exception in for onlinebackup.redstor.com (to skip HTTPS decryption) and included the server into the clientless users (as advised by Sophos) but we are still having issues with SSL certificates. When browsing to https://onlinebackup.redstor.com:443 I received a cert error, so I have installed the cert to trusted root, but I'm still getting the error! I'm not sure where to look next!

Hi everyone, A parent has come into school asking for help with parental controls on a pupils iPhone. The obvious one is restrictions on the device, but what would you recommend for filtering content on browsers? Is the Bluecoat K9 any good as the reviews suggest it's not what it used to be. TIA

For the Shared iPad approach, do you simply create a Student managed ID within School Manager and use that ID for the class set of iPads?

If given the choice, for either LTSB or Edu, would you deploy x86 or x64? We're currently undecided as all of our software is compatible with both (bar Paint.net!) and none of our devices have any more than 8gb RAM. Previously we've only pushed out x86 Win 7 for the small image size.

I manage 3 schools - all of which GDPR has never been mentioned nor spoken about. Personally I think the role of DPO should be held with the director/ headteacher. However I personally see this becoming a role that either IT or the SBM will end up with. Personally I'd like to know what state/ LA schools have to do in comparison to academies - are LA's responsible for ensuring schools are compliant or is it solely upto each school independently? It will be very interesting to see over the coming year how many people end up with the DPO role without any notification or recognition. What does it mean personally for the DPO, will they/ can they be held personally liable for any fault on behalf of an organisation or a school? If so, perhaps the DPO should be named on the annual Data Protection registration so that they are fully aware of the role they are taking on.

Thanks for this - I also noticed that AC2 needed updating via the Appstore and wouldn't download the update normally. All up and running again now, thanks.

Since updating a couple of devices to iOS11, we've been unable to prepare them once restored. iOS 10 and lower works fine using our manual MDM enrollment via a URL. However when trying to prepare iOS 11 devices, we get the error "NSCocoaErrorDomain - 0x64(100)" which looks to occur at the point of activating the device - has anyone else had this issue? I've also tried preparing the devices without MDM enrollment and the same error occurs. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. TIA

Thanks for this, I'll get back to you. I believe we're getting some on trial from the printer company (probably until the SBM finds out how much they're charging for them!!).

Hi, one of the schools which I have just taken over has Lexmark MFDs and have just invested in PaperCut. The printer supplier is looking at almost £150 per RFID reader - has anyone managed to get the cheap Amazon/ eBay readers to work?

We also use a Sonicwall with our VLANS to achieve this. Although we have used our Ruckus wireless to create a segregated Guest SSID which can't communicate with the other VLANs (although you could achieve this through the use of ACLs). The only issue with the SonicWall is the limited reporting functions (as this is what Ofsted like to see) - however I have recently come across FastVue for SonicWall which is a great reporting tool (much better than the Analyzer product). By default we have configured our Guest and BYOD to the strictest levels of content filtering - fortunately we don't have many devices brought in, so the blanket function works well. However if you wanted to give granular access through your Guest or BYOD you'd have to give them credentials to authenticate against the Sonicwall SSO to give the correct access or have several Guest/ BYODs for different departments. As for communicating it - it's all part of the acceptable usage policy which they have to agree to when the hit they guest portal. Hope this helps.

Today I've noticed a strange intermittent issue with a primary domain controller throwing the error message "Data from [domain] is not available from [DomainController.domain] because: The server is not operational" - at this point any MMC windows freeze. Then you open an MMC window 2 minutes later and all is working normally? Nothing major has changed on the server and it has always worked fine previously. Has anyone got any suggestions what might be causing this?

Usually that happens when you haven't confirmed your school details in the EduBase record - is this flagged at all? Just checked and I can access S2S etc.

I'm struggling to get AirServer working - the application on the PCs installs and appears to be working, however when you try and airplay to a device I can only see the Apple TVs, not the PC names with AirServer installed. I have tried configuring the Bonjour Gateway on the ZD without any difference and have also looked at our L3 switch. We have VLANs and interVLAN routing enabled, I have also enabled IGMP snooping (and enabled IGMP querier) and enabled MLD snooping (as this was advised on a Cisco site) however none of these changes have had any affect. Has anyone else had this issue or have any recommendations on solving this?

Is there a guide or anything on creating a policy to achieve this? Next to the permissions section I just have "locally applied" and I have selected unrestricted access. However, when I login using a teacher account, it is still restricted with no option to change this

No, all users are using different email services - most are using IMAP and a few others are using POP - to their direct hosting provider (123reg) - some of the users search function is still working fine, however others don't appear to be working. They can still send and receive emails as normal though, so I'm not certain it is a server-side issue.

They are - I even have a laptop with the issue that's a home laptop (without a domain / linked to any corporate system). Might try an Office reinstall and see if that helps.

Has anyone else had issues with search within Outlook 2013? I've had many users contact me about search just displaying 'No results.' These are users from Education, business, home etc. All of whom have their emails setup differently (via POP, IMAP, Exchange) - so I don't think its related to a specific email protocol setup? I've tried following the MS online troubleshooting guidance without any luck - even after rebuilding the search index it loads a little but then just displays the same error Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

Does anyone use the Office 365 Secure Score security analytics tool? (https://securescore.office.com) I started working on our organisation account and was surprised at how likely we were to get a breach! Since then we have implemented a number of changes. Would just be interested to see how many people are activity using the tool to secure their organisations email/ sites.

My first 3 companies to ask would be Virtue Technologies, Jigsaw24 and JTRS.

A few schools I have spoken to would like to know where to start with deploying Windows 10. Most schools use folder redirection with Win 7 and use WDS to deploy. They only want to roll out Win 10 for a small number of devices to begin with - what would be the best way to start? ( As much info as possible would be appreciated )

Does anyone use SharePoint for their school website? If so, are there any pros (except it's free!) / cons? And most of all, would you recommend leaping to SharePoint for the main school website?