Aldmi

Who owns the Whatsapp Business Account? (The school or the indivdual). The school own the device and sim card, number etc Why was "work inapproprite" communication taking place on a "work" account. Is it a safeguarding risk? It was inappropriate in the sense that it included overly critical comments about senior leadership—definitely not something that would been shared via email.

Hi everyone, I’m looking for advice regarding the use of WhatsApp Business in a school setting, specifically concerning GDPR compliance. As a school, we primarily use Office 365 (Outlook and Teams for some parent meetings) and iSAMS to communicate with parents. However, for the last six months, our admissions manager at our independent school has been using a business phone with WhatsApp Business to communicate with prospective parents. In some cases, the communication has continued even after the students have joined the school. At the time this was introduced, I raised concerns as the school’s Data Protection Officer. I felt this wasn’t appropriate due to the lack of central control over the data and the potential GDPR implications. Recently, we had a data access request from a former staff member who had communicated with the admissions manager via WhatsApp. Some of the messages exchanged were not work-appropriate, and they even asked if they could delete certain messages before I reviewed the device. This highlighted my initial concerns. Now, the admissions manager wants to continue using WhatsApp Business, but I’ve been asked to report back on whether it’s compliant and, if not, why. From my research, most information seems to focus on personal WhatsApp, not the business version. However, my understanding is that GDPR requires data to be centrally managed and easily retrievable for access requests or audits. This is straightforward with Office 365 and iSAMS, but WhatsApp doesn’t seem to meet these requirements, meaning it likely isn’t compliant. I’ve also spoken to a few other schools, and none of them seem to use WhatsApp for parent communication. Has anyone else encountered a similar situation or have any advice on how to handle this? Thanks in advance!

It seems like something has been partially set up, as Smoothwall is connected to Active Directory and is filtering based on the groups students belong to.

We recently had a Smoothwall firewall installed, replacing our previous Fortinet device. One of the engineers set it up to replicate our previous configuration, including alerting myself and the safeguarding lead whenever a student attempts to access restricted content (e.g., pornography). The issue we're facing is that these alerts only provide the IP address of the device. To identify the student, I currently have to: Check the onsite DHCP server. Block the device. Wait for a student to report that their internet isn’t working. This process is time-consuming and inefficient. I’ve heard that Smoothwall can be configured to require students to log in using their Active Directory accounts, which would make identifying individuals much easier. However, I haven’t been able to find any guidance in the help section about setting this up. Does anyone know if this is possible and, if so, how to configure Smoothwall to require AD logins for personal devices? Any advice would be much appreciated!

We have terminated a etachers contarct with immediate effect and they are no longer allowed on the school site. In clearing out their office we have found a USB stick which has a mixture of their personal stuff (family photos, bank statements etc) and also school related stuff (student reports, tracking data etc) The school uses 365 so all data is stored on onedrive/sharepoint so we have never had this issue before. Anyone had this situation before and how have they addressed it? Its their own personal USB so not school property but feel it would be a data breach handing it back. The member have staff has ingagaed a solicitor who has demanded it back

Thanks for the advice everyone, had the remote support session and touchwood it is now working. Looks like it was a combination of the advice you all gave: the issue here looks to have been a combination of bad cached info and DNS throttling. I added in additional DNS servers to avoid the DNS issues and also cleared the DNS cache. Also, I cleared the Guardian caches and then disabled them so that the HTTPS and Proxy caches will no longer cause problems.

domain has our internal domain there but hidden it

ARP Table size is 16384 and SYN backlog queue size is 65536 I've just rung and said the head is close to making an official complaint and it is now been escalated so hopefully get something sorted

I'm really dissapointed as well, we had Fortinet for 8 years and one of the reasons we moved is because Smoothwall said as they are UK passed and understood schools we would get much better support

Had a smoothwall S9+ installed over the summer and not had any major issues until a couple of weeks ago Randomly one day all users either wired or on the wifi couldn't get onto random sites or took ages to load and both getting the error message conenctions timeout. I rebooted the firewall and that seemed to fix it and logged it with Smoothwall. They said because I rebooted they couldn't see the cause! Tuesday morning same thing happened again and I logged a high prioity support ticket, The only update i've had since then is that its been passed to second line support. It causing major issues here as we can't access iSAMS, office 365 and some online exams had to be cancelled today. I've added a few staff as exceptions and theirs are working fine. I'm new to smoothwall so not sure if there is anything I can do other then keep chasing the support for an update. I've run the Functionality test and atatched the results if anyone has any ideas on anythign I can try

We moved from a Fortigate firewall a Smoothwall over the summer and seems to be going ok so far We have the S9+ and just wodnered if anyone else had this model and could comment on the noise of the unit? Since the start of term the fans sound like they are going full speed and like a jet engine. Just wondered if this was normal as you could hardly hear the old fortigate unit

Just wondering what other people do or any advice. As the information I am finding online is a bit mixed. Most of the student info is kept in iSAMS. Some things such as uniform agreements, ICT agreements etc are printed, signed by students, and then put in a paper file (never to see the light of day again) I'd proposed using Microsoft Forms for these sorts of agreements, but management insists they want an actual signature As a compromise, I’ve said why don't I just scan the signed documents in and add them to the pupil record in iSAMS and then we can get rid of the paper copy. In terms of data protection is it fine to destroy the paper copy after it’s been scanned in and would the scanned version still be valid?

We currently have Fortinet firewall/moniutor and moving to smoothwall this summer. All our students have byod iPads and we have never used the deep packet inspection so haven't needed syduetns to install a certificate. However with smoothwall we are going to be doing this, so will need them to install the certificate. How does everyone who does this get the certofocater to the devices? With papercut we emailed all students a weblink to install that profile

Wondered if anyone had seen this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64939558 Our Head has asked me to contact them and look at applying for one Does anyone know much about it? My first thought was if its getting that hot its going to be using a lot of data and will absolutely hammer our network. A lot of our switches are way best the recommend life cycle so big concern it would cause an outage

FYI I asked our account manager a few weeks ago about the new curriculum manager as we wanted to use it for activities and music lessons. The response I got was You are correct that eventually Activities Manager will be replaced by Curriculum Manager. However there has been a very significant delay in Curriculum Manager meaning that it will not be available for some considerable time. So, I would advise looking again at Activities Manager

They were definitely going to charge us to charge the name of the printing template. I raised a support ticket and they originally said how to do it, but then when the advisor realised we were on the hosted platform said no we couldn't only the internal reporting team could do it. The reporting team then told us it would be chargeable

Yes the templates are hosted their end and updated SQL. You have to put a request to have new reports made and literally any change. Our previous head had a habit of wanting something change for literally every report cycle so it was a nightmare Admissions We don't use the admissions portal but all applicant data etc is in the admissions module and then moves over to current pupils Teachers covering system We use timetabler to make the timetable and then import it to iSAMS over the summer. We then use the cover manager through the year which is linked to the HR manager so records the absences for HR. Payments and invoicing system We have just signed up for the billing module and also the 'iFinance' to move away from SAGE. Thats this summers job

We moved to iSAMS from SIMS in 2015 They host it for us so it has certainty taken off a load of work updating, backing up etc. The majority of modules are easy to use and the app is great as all our teachers have iPads. We have just started using the welbeing manger to record all student concerns, safeguarding etc. Downsides are that we use the reporting module to write our school reports, however because they host we have to request any changes however minor and there is a cost. An example of this I've just had was we have a report template named 'Full Report 2018' and I asked to change it to 'Full Report'. The cost for that was £105! Additionally some modules are very clunky and overly complicated, the tracking manager looks great on paper but getting it actually set up and working was a nightmare and in the end I gave up

Mobile phones are banned under the school policy, but what they do is just keep it in their bags so they can hotspot The next plan is to have them collected at the start of they day, but I'm staying well clear of getting involved in that

We have the added complication of overseas boarders whose parents see no issue in VPNs as they are the norm. We have previously looked at putting them on the MDM as a shared device and also pushing out a certificate from the firewall. However parents refused both of these requests, ranging from their daughters could be trusted, it was their own device and didn't want them connected to the school, to even that they didn't want the school 'spying' on their daughters then when they were at home

We are an 'iPad' school so every student as an iPad. The infant/Junior school have school bought iPads which are locked down through a device management software. The senior school and sixth for is BYOD so we don't have any control over them. We've always had a the usual problem with VPNs and block them through the firewall as best we can. However over the last month or so, more and more students are been caught using their mobiles to hotspot and therefore completely bypassing the firewall. At a recent parents forum there was a very mixed response, with some parents blaming parents for allowing their children to use the data on their phones and others who are the more vocal blaming the school and more specifically the IT department! I've explained to our management that from a technical point of view, there isn't much we can do to stop this. And emphasized that it is more a case of educating the students on why we have systems in place and also harsher punishment's if they are caught. All students sign an IT policy saying they won't use VPNs or hotspot. The sanctions are: 1st - Told to not do it again 2nd Offence - Lunch time detention 3rd offence - after school detention 4th offence - Letter to parents 5th offence - 1 day internal suspension I'm just wondering if anyone else has this issue and what your school do? We are a independent/private school so have a 'unique' set of parents should we say who have very strong views on what the school should be doing and what they pay for

I keep getting staff raising students using inappropriate images for their profile pictures. I've also got a few staff who insist on having a cartoon version of themselves! Management have now asked me to remove all profile pictures and stop users adding them Has anyone manged to do this?

Thanks, I will scrap that idea then and just go with the normal upgrade process

I have been using the app 'Set up School PCs' and running the package on the desktops that I am moving to windows 10 However none of these desktops seem to be now picking up the group policies from the server. The big problem with this is none of the printers are showing up when students login. Has anyone else had this problem? Thanks

Finally getting round to moving all the student machines to windows 10 I am just going through all the group polices to make sure they can't change settings etc Does anyone have any templates or advice for things I should be looking for? I've disabled the 'first sign-in animation screen' as that was causing an issue for staff