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Wasn't entirely sure where to put this so please feel free to move Hey, We were asked today to look into having an enterprise wireless system setup in the school to (originally) give internet access to staff members mobiles laptops etc throughout the school. Although I can see that brief increase once we start writing a specification in earnest. Anyway I can see this leading to a massive increase in BYOD for teachers and maybe students, something that is currently discouraged. I know PAT testing is a suggestion rather than a rule but do you have any kind of reference to electrical usage/safety in the BYOD usage policy or is it just something that's kinda just left to itself? just something I was thinking about

Hi In CC4 you can set up AUP's that users have to accept before they login. I have had an AUP run and when i go to specific users it shows they accepted it and when. Is there a way to print off this information e.g. a summary of all teaching staff showing they have all accepted the AUP? Thanks

As you've probably noticed, there's been no AUP Informant release for quite a while now. That's not to say the program is perfect - far from it. I've not stopped work though - there are some serious limitations to the current code and I've gone back to basics and started fresh. A long while ago I mused about a 2.0 release with support for AD integration. Unfortunately that's something I can't deliver due to time pressure with university work. There will, however, be some major changes that will really smooth out the installation and make the program much more flexible. 1) The config file will die! The only reason it exists now is because the software grew quickly from something we used internally at our school to something that had to work on many different networks. The result is a cryptic xml file that needs modifying by hand. 2.0 will have a tiny server program that lets you change settings graphically and clients will pick these up instantly - no need to redeploy like before! 2) Customisation? You've got it. Currently there's no easy way to change the text that the program displays. 2.0 will let you instantly change any piece of text and the title image from the server program. 3) Logging and Reporting. Okay, so we have a client program that can communicate with our server program so why not do away with those awful .ini files that get written to profile folders? That's exactly what I'm doing. From the server program you can see who's accepted and who's declined the policy, as well as print HTML reports out. 4) There when you want it - only when you want it. I'm adding several new options for choosing when the program displays. A lot of feedback I've received is along the lines of "show the program until the user accepts" and this will definitely be included. You'll still have the option to send emails, log the user off and shutdown the computer when the policy is declined. 5) Your ideas here. Now's the time to shape the next version. At this relatively early stage it's easy to change the program so if there's something you'd like to see (or not see!) then post here and I'll see what I can do!

I do, so here's a present for you. I know AUP Informant is far from perfect, let's have a quick look at the issues: Requires messing with a config file No MSI for deployment No CC3 package Not always possible to give staff and students different policies Limited choice of when to show policies Well I've been busy and I should have a beta version of AUP Informant 2 and AUP Informant Policy Server (AIPS) ready for you in the holidays! What's new? Read on... http://www.paulbeesley.com/AIPS/main.jpg The app is now split into two parts, the client which displays the policies on the local machine and the server, where you can configure settings. That means no more configuration, just deploy the MSI or CC3 package (I can make both of them now) and off you go! http://www.paulbeesley.com/AIPS/policy.jpg You can set three types of policy in AUP Informant 2, one for staff, one for students and a generic policy for any other type of user (maybe guest users, temp staff, etc). You can also now choose when the policy is shown and you have a lot more options open to you. http://www.paulbeesley.com/AIPS/mail.jpg No huge changes to the email notifications here, just an option to have multiple recipients, which never hurts. http://www.paulbeesley.com/AIPS/ad.jpg Saving the best for last. Yep, that's Active Directory integration right there (or it would be if the screenshot wasn't on my home machine). Assign policies to groups, individual users or entire domains! What else would you like to see? Get your ideas in early and I'll see what I can do!

[February 2019 Edit] The project is being resurrected. I'll update this post when I have something ready to show. Thanks for your patience.

I think it's time for some screenshots since we're about to enter (private) beta testing. Hopefully I've rolled in all the features you asked for and more! Client Design Much more customisation available here. You can change any of the text that's displayed, including text on the buttons. Plus, you can replace the default 48x48 icon with any gif, jpg or png file you like to reflect your school. http://www.paulbeesley.com/uploads/betascreens/clientcfg.PNG Mail Notifications Improvements here include the ability to insert variables that are replaced with real user data. For example, when a user declines your policy you can receive an email detailing the date and time plus computer name, OS and domain role. There are a handful of reliability improvements too, and you'll find that the software itself is much more reliable now that we have a client - server setup. http://www.paulbeesley.com/uploads/betascreens/mail.PNG Policies The most important part of the app! The secondary policy is now much more flexible in terms of when it's displayed. You can choose never to show it (sorely lacking in 1.x) or to show it only when certain conditions are met. Multiple conditions are now possible and the software can pick out terms from any point in the username rather than just the start. A new option is to display the policy at every logon instead of stopping once the user accepts, great for kiosks or restricted workstations! http://www.paulbeesley.com/uploads/betascreens/policies.PNG Reporting and Statistics Definitely something that should have been there from the start. The software no longer saves .ini files to home folders - everything is logged at the server end to an internal database (no messing with SQL Server required) so that stats can be produced as well as the nice overview chart you can see below. You can also write your own SQL queries if you like, though several useful reports are built-in already. http://www.paulbeesley.com/uploads/betascreens/reports.PNG Client Software Last but not least, the client software itself. Now it's a very lightweight piece of software at under 250KB and a snap to deploy with an MSI package available. The config file is dead; changes are pushed automatically from the server. It's more customisable and more reliable than ever before! http://www.paulbeesley.com/uploads/betascreens/client.png Once beta testing is completed it'll be ready to go. It feels like ages since I made an AUP Informant release so I'm looking forward to letting you play with it.

It's official: I'm restarting work on AUP Informant now that EduSweep 2.6 is out the door. In fact, I started to think about AUP Informant at the very start of this year. This will be a big change so AUP Informant is moving to version 3.0 with the following planned features: Distributed functionality: a minimal server app (aupd), the client app and a 'toolkit' app to extract data and generate reports Run-as-service support for the server application (often requested!) Windows 7, 8, 10 support for the client application Optional Docker container for deploying the server application Direct Connect option for VLAN and multi-subnet support Better support for terminal services environments Open protocol allows for third-party/alternative client apps JSON-based config files, if you want to go in and tweak settings with a text editor Source code, downloads and issue tracking hosted on GitHub Source available as GPLv3 code Full documentation Importantly, this is still a way off. I am still in the early stages of defining protocols, reorganising the old application code and building the server. If you have comments and/or feature requests then now is the time to get them to me! Later in the year I will look for one or two partner schools to try a beta version and we will go from there. You can reach me in this thread, by PM or using the contact form at https://www.paulbeesley.com/contact Thanks, Paul

Hi Guys, Wondering if anyone could lend a hand with something, as my coding foo is not strong. I'm trying (if possible) to implement a simple redirect for AUP within squid, so users have to accept a policy. A user would request for example google.com, squid would than check its redirect program and issue a 302 redirect to a locally hosted webpage containing the schools "Internet AUP" wherein they are able to accept, a cookie is set, and they than proceed to the page they requested. Now obviously, there are a few problems. 1) Redirect script would need to catch the url requested from squid, and redirect at the end 2) Redirect script would need to check if a 12hour cookie has been set thus the user has previously accepted the AUP 3) Redirect script would need to be able to catch all URLS, er say *.*? Without catching the initial url, there isnt much point as the redirect page would jusst halt the process if a cookie is set. Does anyone think this can be done? I found this on squid-cache.org (PHP) url_rewrite_program /etc/squid/redirect.php $temp = array(); while ( $input = fgets(STDIN) ) { // Split the output (space delimited) from squid into an array. $temp = split(' ', $input); // Set the URL from squid to a temporary holder. $output = $temp[0] . "\n"; // Check the URL and rewrite it if it matches limewire.com if ( strpos($temp[0], "limewire.com") ) { $output = "302:http://www.google.com/\n"; } echo $output; }

Does anyone ask their technical teams to sign an IT Team specific AUP or do they all sign the standard staff policy? Our general staff AUP doesn't cover some things that IT staff have access too e.g. server rooms. I need to write one but didn't want to reinvent the wheel if anyone had one or a template I could use. Thanks

In late 2007 I began working on the original AUP Informant. It was only a simple program, designed to work on my school’s network alone. What we wanted was a way to show our usage policy and to automatically gather our pupils’ responses to it; so I pulled up a chair and set about coding AUP Informant. http://www.pbeesley.myzen.co.uk/uploads/edugeek/logo2.jpg For our small network it worked perfectly, even if it was a little rough around the edges, but then I was encouraged at the BETT conference to join EduGeek. Like many techs I read the forums from time to time but never got around to signing up and contributing but it was Diello who twisted my arm (gently, I should add!) and convinced me to start posting. Soon after, I made the AUP Informant software available on the forums and was surprised by how many people were looking for this sort of tool. Despite the simplicity of the program I saw a rush of downloads which prompted me to carry on developing it. There were plenty of feature requests for things such as a second policy, a help window and actions such as logging the user off or restarting the computer if the user declined the policy. While it wasn’t too hard to add these in, it became clear that the software wasn’t designed to be extensible and I had plenty of help requests. The trouble was that it was designed for one network, not the many variations that it was being used on. The configuration was stored in an XML file that needed editing by hand, the user responses were saved as hidden files in their network shares, to change any settings you had to redeploy the clients. It quickly became clear that I would need to start fresh and make AUP Informant 2 much more flexible and reliable – but how would I go about it and what did people really need? I spent almost 3 months on surveys and talking to schools to find out what the priorities should be and this is what we came up with: * Easy to deploy and configure with an MSI package available * Improved reliability * Better support for multiple policies * Responses should be recorded centrally and not scattered around the network And so here we are today, almost a year after the last AUP Informant release. It’s been a long road; longer than I’d planned at least. Faced with my student fees I considered going commercial with the software and my degree studies put a stop to any development from May through June. My financial situation is a little better now and I can’t bring myself to charge for what is essentially a labour of love. So here it is, free of charge and free of ads – AUP Informant 2.0. It’s been taken back to the drawing board and written from the ground up – all 7000 lines of it- to be simpler, more stable, more flexible and feature rich. I focused on deployment first of all, working towards a seamless method for both vanilla and CC3 networks. I think you’ll really notice the difference when you try it out! There’s no configuration file to edit, just an MSI installer for the server and a package for the client. The CC3 package wizard can convert the client MSI into a CC3 package without needing a package build machine, just a few simple steps and it’s done. What’s more, the client is less than 1MB when installed and even the server installation should take at most 60 seconds. The server application helps you configure all settings through the user interface, no text editing required this time around. Any changes to your policy or options are reflected immediately and seamlessly pushed out to clients. Clients will also detect the server automatically so you’ll never have to set the IP or hostname even if you move the server application. It’s now also a snap to define when the secondary policy is shown. User responses aren’t saved as files anymore (long overdue!) which helps reliability an awful lot. Instead they’re saved in the server database where they are used to produce an overview chart and report data. If you can write SQL queries then you can even create custom reports and save them. So I've rambled enough. Go grab a copy already! http://www.pbeesley.myzen.co.uk/uploads/edugeek/policies.jpg http://www.pbeesley.myzen.co.uk/uploads/edugeek/reporting.jpg

Some changes to the UK Computer Crime laws comes into effect on the 1st of October. The Register has the details: UK cybercrime overhaul finally comes into effect ? The Register But basically: The maximum penalty for "unauthorised access to a computer system" has been raised from six months to two years in prison. Denial of service attacks are now clearly criminal, with a maximum penalty of up to ten years behind bars. The amended act makes it an offence to distribute hacking tools for criminal purposes. Spyblog has a more indepth analysis: Computer Misuse Act amendments come into force on 1st October 2008 - Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk A colour coded diff can be viewed here: Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) - consolidated version Review and update your School Computer Usage Policies as appropriate.