Moving MIS is a daunting task and is no small undertaking for a school. Moving to the cloud from a legacy system means that there are cyber security benefits but may be something new to your organisation. There is often the assumption that the new MIS porvider will seamlessly migrate the data for you, however there is a considerable amount of work that the school must do beforehand in order to make this happen.  This article provides some practical guidance and considerations.

Computing Magazine recently reported about the ICO reprimanding seven organisation for domestic abuse breaches in the last 14 months.  A collection of public bodies, charitable organisations, law enforcers and lawyers have made personal data slips when handling domestic abuse cases in the last year, showig abusers where to find their victim is hiding.

We've added a Data Protection Officer badge for your website, or to print out!

These can be used to demonstrate your commitment to compliance with data protection legislation and best practice.

The ICO have published a 10 step guide to sharing information to safeguard children or young people from physical, emotional or mental harm. 

The new guidance addresses concerns from organisations and frontline workers that may be scared to share information for fear of falling foul of data protection law.

The time following a cyber attack can be very stressful, and in the heat of the moment it can be difficult to know what the best thing to do between working out what went wrong, how to recover and what went missing, it can be hard to know where to start first.

We provide some help and guidance in our Information and Cyber Security Best Practice Area, which also includes the checklist:  document What to do immediately after a Cyber Attack(58 KB) .

Are you looking for some data protection training for your inset day(s) at the start of term?  Here are some ideas about how to raise awareness around data protection and cyber security for your staff. 

The training should be relevant, accurate and up to date. 

The DfE recently published an update to the Keeping Children Safe in Education Document 2025.  The document has a strong emphasis on making sure everyone is aware of the online dangers of using the internet and makes recommendations about how schools and colleges should put processes in place to keep children safe online. 

The Information Commissioner's Office have recently put Leicester City Council forward as an FOI (Freedom of Information) best practice example. An FOI refers to a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The Act allows any individual or organisation to make a request to a public authority for information they have recorded. 

Here's a little fun. It's our not-so-good friend Harry the Hacker. He's all over the place...can you find him?

A reprimand has been issued by the ICO to Parkside Community Primary School in relation to the infringements of Article 5 (1)(f), Article 24 (1) and Article 32 of the UK GDPR. This article discusses the reprimand and looks and what schools can do to avoid this type of breach.

Some of the information in the reprimand document is redacted, but the main details are:

A safeguarding email was shared in the classroom via the electronic whiteboard. The ICO has found that the schoo

We've updated our document redaction guidelines to include more information on the techniques available as well as exemptions.

https://dataprotection.education/best-practice-library/best-practice/redaction

This article is about the use of WhatsApp as a communication tool in schools and recent vulnerabilities. It discusses school staff using WhatsApp as a communication method for school business.

We are sometimes asked by staff whether it is OK for staff to be in a WhatsApp group for important school messages. Staff often wish to use it because it is an easy way to communicate and a platform that a lot of people are familiar with.  It is also free. There are issues around this: