Service Announcements!

SPAM!

As a result of the increasing incidence of SPAM (Junk e-mails) being received by users on EDUNET, SLTS is to implement a policy for managing SPAM e-mails. The changes outlined below will come into affect on Monday 18th September 2006.

In order to increase the effectiveness of these filters without the risk of dropping relevant emails, we will be implementing the “Junk E-mail“ folder that is used by Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Web Access. This will filter out and place SPAM in the “Junk E-mail” folder.

It should be noted that there may be circumstances where emails are wrongly categorised and put into this “Junk E-mail” folder. With this in mind, it is imperative that you scan the “Junk E-mail” folder for any important or relevant emails before deleting all emails from the “Junk E-mail” folder.

If you do find any mail in this folder which is not junk email, right clicking on it in Outlook and select Junk email >> Mark as not junk. In Outlook Web Access, right click the email and select Add to Safe Sender List. The email will then need to be moved into the inbox. The above actions will then stop mail from these senders being categorised as SPAM

Baglan IT E-Mail

Due to the past migrations from the old Baglan IT configuration to the new SLTS network, we will be removing references to Baglan IT from the network to provide greater speed and efficiency.

As of Friday, 30th June, 2006, the old Baglan IT e-mail services will no longer be in operation. Should these systems still be in use, please take the time to notify contacts of the change and take any necessary steps to transfer your data to the new system.

If you have any queries regarding this, please contact the Service Desk in the first instance.

Windows Updates

We have discovered that lots of schools haven’t been applying their Windows updates, so we have started pushing Windows updates out to the curriculum computers.

This may lead to some computers being a little slow as they do their required updates. It may also lead to some computers coming up with pop ups and the computers may require a few restarts.

This will only affect schools that have not kept on top of their Windows updates. Any school that has been updating their computers with the critical and security updates will be unaffected.

Keeping up to date with Windows updates is very important to protect your computers from virus’ etc, and it has been noticed that the updates have not been applied in lots of schools.

Once all the computers are up to date, updates will install as and when they are released by Microsoft, thus keeping the computers on the network up to date and secure against security threats. These updates come out at a rate of a few per week, so will be installed mainly un-noticed by users.

Whiteboard and Projector Installation Issues

Premier Presentation are a company who undertook (almost exclusively) the installation of interactive whiteboards and projectors in schools (organised through Baglan IT Centre or SLTS) until the current contract was let in April 2005.

Whilst the installations were to meet current relevant statutory regulations in relation to the installations, it appears there may be a small number of installations where standards specifically related to the electrical supply for the projectors may not have been strictly met, although it is unlikely this presents any risk.

To that end the company will be arranging for all schools where they completed an installation to receive a visit by a NEIC qualified contractor to check each one, with remedial work being undertaken where necessary. The company will be contacting schools immediately to arrange visits as soon as possible.

IT Data

In view of the arson attack at Penyrheol Comprehensive, we need to remind and advise you of procedures to employ with regard to securing IT data, both Admin (SIMS and Finance) and Curriculum.

Admin
All schools are on the Council’s admin network, and the current position is that you back up your SIMS and other finance data on tapes which are provided to the school as part of the SLA. These tapes need to be stored in a fireproof safe (best), or lockable steel cabinet, which is kept in a different building to the school’s servers. Consideration should also be given to keeping a copy of the back-up tape off site altogether. We are currently working on providing a central back up once a week (over the weekend) for all secondary schools for SIMS and Finance databases which will be available as from Saturday 1 April 2006, but you should regard this as an additional measure and ensure robust management of data back up and storage is implemented in your school following the above guidelines.

Curriculum
Some schools are on the LEA’s “domain” and managed on the Council’s Active Directory structure. For these schools, any work saved on the curriculum servers provided by the County are backed up each night in County Hall. If the school uses other servers, or stores data on individual PCs, or has modified the Active Directory system provided - thus preventing this back up - you should back up this data yourself following the principles outlined in the paragraph on Admin (above). For those schools which are not on the domain, either because they are yet to be scheduled in, or because they choose not to, please make sure your network is adequately backed up in the event of fire or theft. We do notice that both curriculum and admin data on schools’ networks are often packed with files which may be redundant. As part of good system management, servers should be cleared of irrelevant or out-of-date files so you are managing essential data only for the purposes of back up.