While this video offers a light-hearted view of the loss of USB sticks, it does serve as a reminder that they do go missing. If you work in a school please, please, please don’t store children’s information on USB sticks. If you don’t have access to secure on-line file storage, ask your IT provider/local government authority what they’re doing about it.
For those working in the UK, please be wary about using Google Docs to store documents that contain children’s sensitive information. It is an offence to store such data on servers hosted outside of the European Union and you’re also required to have specific data usage agreements in place.
If no video is displayed, it’s probably because YouTube is blocked by your establishment’s web filtering policy. Sorry!
Further to my previous post on Data Handling Security, Ray Fleming (UK Education Industry Manager, Microsoft) has posted on his blog information pertaining to an additional, detailed guidance document from Becta.
Ray reports that the document, which contains specific information on MIS data items and levels of security, was originally due for publication in December 2008. It has been announced on the Becta Collaboration site that the additional guidance will now be out at the end of March 2009.
I want to thank Ray for keeping track of this subject and continuing to report back via his blog, which can be reached by clicking here.
The Becta document is essential reading for any member of staff who has responsibility for handling and securing data, especially Network Managers, MIS Managers, ICT Coordinators and Head Teachers.
Microsoft UK have passed comment on the Becta document on their Schools Blog – click here for further details.
Ray Fleming, UK Education Industry Manager for Microsoft, has posted a related article on his blog which is worth checking out – click here for details. Ray has also produced a visual representation of what the current understanding is with regard to Information Security: Click here to see more.
Becta have launched a community area for schools to discuss data handling, which can be accessed by clicking here.
Further to my 