Is Your Firewall Secure?

Are you prepared for new threats to internet security?

The governments flagship document on safeguarding children, Keeping Children Safe in Education, states:

"Whilst considering their responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and provide them with a safe environment in which to learn, governing bodies and proprietors should be doing all that they reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to the above risks from the school’s or college’s IT system. As part of this process, governing bodies and proprietors should ensure their school or college has appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place. Governing bodies and proprietors should consider the age range of their children, the number of children, how often they access the IT system and the proportionality of costs vs risks."

The onus is on school and colleges to ensure that their firewalls and internet security are robust enough to defend them from the threat of cyber attack and also to filter out online searches on harmful or illegal subjects. Schools and collegees must ensure that they are aware of any new trends, social media groups, YouTube videos etc which your students are accessing.

Monitoring internet content

The UK Safer Internet Centre recommends that schools and colleges create a risk assessment which considers the risks that both children and staff may encounter online, together with associated mitigating actions and activities.

No monitoring is infallable but your school or college should do whatever they can to ensure that your monitoring strategy or system (including keywords if using technical monitoring services) at least covers the following content:

Illegal - for example, child abuse images and terrorist content;
Extremism - promoting terrorism and terrorist ideologies, violence or intolerance;
Bullying - using the repeated use of force, threat or coercion to abuse, intimidate or aggressively dominate others;
Child sexual exploitation - encouraging the child into a coercive/manipulative sexual relationship. This may include encouragement to meet;
Discrimination - promoting the unjust or prejudicial treatment of people with protected characteristics listed in the Equality Act 2010;
Drugs / Substance abuse - displaying or promotes the illegal use of drugs or substances;
Pornography - displaying sexual acts or explicit images;
Self Harm - promoting/displaying deliberate self harm;
Violence - displaying/promoting the use of physical force intended to hurt or kill; and
Suicide - suggesting the user is considering suicide

Reviewing online safety

The DfE recommends that; "Schools and colleges should consider carrying out an annual review of their approach to online safety, supported by an annual risk assessment that considers and reflects the risks their children face."

Annex D of KCSiE highlights a wealth of information available to support schools, colleges and parents/carers to keep children safe online, including:

Childnet provide guidance for schools on cyberbullying;
Educateagainsthate provides practical advice and support on protecting children from extremism and radicalisation;
London Grid for Learning provides advice on all aspects of a school or college’sonline safety arrangements;
NSPCC provides advice on all aspects of a school or college’s online safety arrangements;
Safer recruitment consortium “guidance for safe working practice”, which may help ensure staff behaviour policies are robust and effective;
Searching screening and confiscation is departmental advice for schools on searching children and confiscating items such as mobile phones;
South West Grid for Learning provides advice on all aspects of a school orcollege’s online safety arrangements; and
Use of social media for online radicalisation - A briefing note for schools on how social media is used to encourage travel to Syria and Iraq.

...and many others

The resources on this page can be used to help build your workplace data protection policy and risk assessment.

Please contact Handsam if any further assistance is needed via telephone: 03332 070737 or email info@handsam.co.uk.

Appropriate filtering and monitoring

The UK Safer Internet Centre has published a very useful guide for education settings and filtering providers about establishing 'appropriate levels’ of filtering and monitoring. The guidance is broken down into the following sections:

Illegal online content;
Inappropriate online content;
Filtering system features;
Monitoring strategies;
Monitoring content; and
Monitoring strategy/system features.

It also has resources om provider checklists and responses

It is important to recognise that no filtering systems can be 100% effective and need to be supported with good teaching and learning practice and effective supervision

New threat: Incel

One worrying new trend which schools and colleges may not be familiar with is the rise of the Incel.

An Incel is defined as "a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile towards women and men who are sexually active."

In an article in The Guardian, former Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is reported to have said he “expects teachers to be comfortable to tackle the risks from incel culture through the relationships, sex, and health education (RSHE) curriculum within schools.”

Some terms which schools and colleges should be aware of, include:

ALPHA: a confident man to be a leader within social groups, work and women; BETA: a submissive weak male the opposite of Alpha; CHAD: an attractive man who is successful with women; STACY: sexually desirable women; and RED PILL: a reference to the film The Matrix ,describing a wake up to reality, usually revolving around the world being stacked against them, because wonen are in charge or only attractive men get ahead.