Dear Edugeeks,
e-safe education and the Zentek Group welcome feedback, both positive and negative, but would like to ensure that people have the facts made fully available to them in order to allow a fair and balanced view to be put forward on this forum.
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Firstly, I have to emphasise that Zentek was approached by the press in*all instances. The only time we have ever approached the press is to announce our being chosen by an RBC as their preferred e-safety solution partner, after an 18 month selection & due diligence process.
We were invited to offer our opinion to news reporters as a result of them wanting to understand comments made in the floor of the House of*Commons*by our local and very respected MP – Dr. Brian Iddon - (A member of the cross-party Science and Technology Committee).
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The information that we put forward*was factually correct and can be fully substantiated, subject to some confidentiality agreements put in place with some schools that were audited. Where these are in place we have no choice but to honour them as they are legally binding. Copies of these agreements are also available for scrutiny, should this prove necessary.
We cannot comment on either the nature or the motives, of any reporter's*article as we have no editorial control, nor visibility of any article prior to them being published.
We wish to point out to Mr Gibson that our Mr. Colin McKeown did reiterate his own views, in the comments section of one of the articles, which created this section of the forum. He also*indicated to the writer "St John", again from within the comments section, where he confirmed that; subject to validation of the individual and their establishment, he would willingly engage on an individual basis to share the findings. He has yet to receive had any email from that individual.
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We would also point out that the data referenced by the press articles was based upon genuine feedback and evidence from real schools and were most definitely NOT based on any false positives.
Furthermore, in all cases, the data was captured from systems that were already protected by a variety of nationally accredited perimeter filtering solutions, including one detailed within the thread of this very forum.
We would stress that we are not maligning the work of Network Managers nor the filtering products selected either by them or advocated by their LA. We*simply present the facts*as we have had them reported to us by our technology systems and*highlight the lengths that users will go to, in order to achieve their aims, whether it be*simply to go to a Social Networking site in order to communicate with their friends during school hours,*or on the more rare occurrence, browse through inappropriate material; which as you should be aware, is often illegal in an educational environment, under the Obscene Publications Act.
After all of this being said, our evidence suggests that the majority of students’ activities are within the confines of the school AUP and that there is almost always an underlying reason for the minority to be causing concerns when an issue does occur; hence, our positioning of our e-safe solution as a pastoral support and behavioural amendment tool.
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Furthermore, we acknowledge that the filtering and firewall*development communities are working hard to combat current and emerging threat vectors. One of the latest being the addition to many of the latest Becta certified systems being able to detect the difference between self generated SSL certificates and certification authority level certificates; something we now suspect is a route for many attempts to circumvent perimeter security, as users start to deploy sophisticated home proxy facilities.
The reality is this, however uncomfortable. Users can still get through the best perimeter filtering provision, therefore putting themselves and their school at potential risk once they operate outside of the existing establishment’s security facility. This is acknowledged by Becta, amongst many others. Our belief is that the only effective solution is to monitor activity at the workstations and that this should be done alongside the traditional security protections which we also deem necessary.
Given the above information, we are hopeful that the members of this forum can put aside any previous prejudices and can acknowledge that we are not looking to malign IT professionals, but to provide them with the latest technological tools to prevent issues from potentially becoming very serious. We would urge those on this forum who view our actions with distrust or contempt to contact schools within their own authority, who are working with us on the e-safety front. We hope that they will be pleasantly surprised by the feedback.
If anybody wishes to contact us via our website, on these or any other matters, we would happily point them to a number of network managers – specifically not reference sites, who would acknowledge our positive stance on e-safety and how we help them address some difficult issues.
The Directors – Zentek Solutions & e-safe education Ltd.
