Katy

It's hit the local press here, both Blackpool schools affected were part of BSF so their local IT presumably had little or no involvement in CCTV (or "weren't allowed" even if they wanted to advise) https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/education/parents-reassured-after-live-footage-from-blackpool-schools-cctv-cameras-was-hosted-on-us-website-1-9036288

Blank screen usually means there's something blocking you from accessing secure.aadcdn.microsoftonline-p.com (it got accidentally added to some filter's block lists last week, and accidentally blackholed for anyone using 9.9.9.9 dns)

We run ours on our main network, just on their own VLAN. If I was going to run them on a separate network I'd just stick a 24 port fibre module into the core switch (or use up the free ports as I've already got one), but depends on what your core switch is as to whether that's a possibility or not. Ours is chassis based HP 5406 with a free slot. All comes down to how much bandwidth you think they will use, and whether you can sacrifice that on your main network. Our 38 x 3MP cameras don't use anywhere near the amount of bandwidth I'd have guessed (and they're evenly spaced over multiple cabinets) so we don't notice any performance issues.

They've done a few full page apology ads in a couple of newspapers: KFC's apology for running out of chicken is pretty cheeky - BBC News

Me too! I moved my ADFS server from our old to new connection/IP range yesterday, so when this happens.... all you can think is "what have I done"

There are also DNS related issues with secure.aadcdn.microsoftonline-p.com today, we have Smoothwall which isn't blocking it however DNS lookups are not working if you use quad9 (or if you query ns1.msft.net directly). Presumably when the dns cache at google expires nobody will be able to get on...

I have the same problem - google resolves it but quad9 doesn't. The domain stopping it working for us is secure.aadcdn.microsoftonline-p.com which appears to host all the javascript/CSS etc for 365. However when I looked into it, none of the MS dns servers resolved it either (and as it's their domain they should be doing - ns1-4.msft.net). Which leads me to believe it only works through google etc because they are caching the result and it'll probably fall over for everybody once the cache expires. nslookup secure.aadcdn.microsoftonline-p.com ns1.msft.net Server: ns1.msft.net Address: 208.84.0.53 Name: secure.aadcdn.microsoftonline-p.com

Yay! I was worried that Champions of Champions meant "there will never be any more after this".

It's a message pops up after Ctrl+Alt+Del but before "enter your user/password", so can't have anything fancy like a clickable link. Best you could do would be the URL as part of the message but they'd then have to type that into a phone to look at it.

I'm fairly sure you can't change the maximum length - this setting has been there forever and originally in NT4 it was just a popup messagebox (rather than the full screen affair it's turned into these days) hence the short maximum length. On ours we say something along the lines of "Access to this system is subject to the AUP, available in your student planner or on request", and the full thing is printed into the student planners (which they have to sign each year)

CDRW drive when they were new - it was a 4x HP drive, cost £120 and spat out failed disks like it was some sort of party trick. Fast forward to DVD and I didn't learn, got a 4x DVD writer for £175 which then proceeded to spit out failed disks like it was in competition with the CDRW from several years earlier. Fast forward to BluRay and... I did learn! Waited until they were around the £70 mark and it's never failed a disk

You can guarantee the management at BidVest (I think? had the previous contract) would have had a fit laughing about this. I would if I'd lost a huge contract to someone who then literally couldn't deliver.

Huh, weird. I got the impression IDex was something they made up because they didn't want it constantly authenticating everyone against an AD connector. Although that was just from reading the docs, we had no engineer for our install as I wanted to save the money and DIY.

I've done this just now, probably too late to see if it's helped as it's half a day before half term but hopefully when people come back we have fewer (or none!) "no printers" tickets to say "reboot" to.

There is also the IDEX Client which sits on the individual PCs, as an alternative to the agent (which runs on the DCs) - the agent basically tells Smoothwall whenever the DC receives a successful logon request and tells it the username and IP/computer it came from. The client does similar to what the agent did with Lightspeed v2, it tells Smoothwall when someone logs on/off/unlocks etc.

Also, does RTBF cover things like your name, or does it need to be associated with some other data such as DOB etc? If not, then list of "delete references to $person in $files" on a secure list with the backups should be fine.

Thinking about it, the only reason the current system is on in the premises office here is "because the old one* was", which obviously isn't a good enough reason. Although we also have somebody monitoring it in the evenings, and the majority of our CCTV is external (or fitted indoors but covering an external door). I think regarding the OP - if the deputy had chosen better words rather than almost accusing IT of "spying on the children" this thread probably wouldn't even have come about. Edit: The old system was a recorder which was located in the premises office, not sure why it was installed there but I wasn't involved in its installation. New system is rack mount locked away in the server room.

If that's the case then there should be no images of students on any of the walls or website, and if it's anything like us the corridor walls are plastered with photos (either from things like D of E or sports games, or the "team photo" etc). If it's "inappropriate" to be able to see students then how does anybody manage to work in school without a blindfold??

Ours is on in the premises office, and also in the evenings/Saturdays it's on wherever the "security/evening reception" lady is sat. Never had it on in our office, it'd have to be a decent size screen to be any use and I've got better uses for the money. I don't see how it's a safeguarding issue for DBS cleared staff to be able to see it - we see ours when asked to go through playback if there's an incident, or to download clips for the police etc.

@psydii's post about shadow copy was a repsonse to mine about not being able to delete out of VSS - although admittedly I wasn't quoted in it so maybe that wasn't clear.

I don't think anyone was suggesting this - I mentioned that you can't selectively delete from VSS, which you would have to do in addition to deleting from your backups. We use Shadow Copies as a quick and easy solution to "I deleted this by mistake", rather than having to mount the Veeam backups and pull files out. This is in addition to proper backups with Veeam both to multiple disk and to tape. However I don't think that we should be expected to break VSS just to wipe some data out.

I used to get 120/128GB SanDisk SSDs from Scan for about £25 + VAT each, unfortunately they seem to have dropped the lower capacities. Luckily for me we bought 200 and put them in everything, and then new kit came with factory fitted SSDs, so I've got a nice stack of spares that we stripped out of the upgraded old kit when it went byebyes

We also don't use the Internal Exams Manager. No idea how we do ours, whether we have fake exam cycles set up on the main Exams module for the internal exams or not... I've had a quick look and can't really see much but I don't have anything to do with Exams and I'm scared of breaking something whilst poking about in the Exams module

Agreed - there are a few things in iSAMS where I sit there and think "...WHY have they done it like that? That's stupid, why isn't $option possible?" but you'd get that in any system. And I can't off the top of my head remember what any of those are so they can't have been that big a deal! I think reporting (not academic reports) is my favourite thing in iSAMS - they are all just SSRS reports, you can download the built in ones into visual studio if one just needs tweaking, or create new ones from scratch and add them to any module. Today I've just knocked one up to give the minutes late per AM/PM registration session per child, for $daterange, totals and averages at the bottom as the built in one just gave percentages for "time missed". Our previous system was Engage (EXE based rather than hosted or web based) and the fight I had with that for the monthly update was unbelievable (it broke Crystal Reports every time and needed re-installing). (Yes I'd forgotten about Engage when I said I'd only used Gold/e1/iSAMS earlier, must have repressed it out of my mind). Edit: Another thing I like over Engage is the API section. When we used to use Groupcall Messenger, we had an Xporter job that connected into the Engage SQL server and ripped data out. On iSAMS it just connects to the API and gets data that way - so if an update changes the database schema we don't have to get Groupcall in to write new scripts as the API should remain the same.

In some places it's not "too much effort" - it's downright impossible. You can't delete specific files from volume shadow, the "previous versions" windows are read only. We're not disabling VSS as we use that a lot when someone says "This folder has disappeared" when what they actually mean is they (or someone when they left a PC unlocked) deleted it 3 months ago.