SWOTNET @ YEL Learn to Earn

Hi All,


SWOTNET had a fantastic day with the Young Enterprise London, Learn to Earn team at Grieg City Academy today.


SWOT were asked by the energetic and persuasive Selina Patel to assist as a volunteer for the day and we joined Gosbert Chagula from YEL and Maureen Arhagba from the Grieg City Academy, alongside Irini Poyiatzi, Cllr Reece also taking on the volunteering duty.


The day was broken up in to small task based segments where the students are asked to consider their futures, outlining concepts such as "what is success, who they consider to be successful and why.
After talking with the students we then asked them all to outline what they thought they might do in order that they might be successful.
As you might imagine there were some brilliant ideas coming from the students about how they envision their futures, worryingly, although not surprisingly given modern life, many of the young students also equated success with money.
One of the brilliant aspects of the day was that the course allowed us to really explore the reasons so many students saw money as a mark of success. The course materials enabled us as volunteers to engage with the students and get them to really consider what they think it means to be successful .
We covered discussions on jobs and as a volunteer, SWOT spoke about how we got started in business and we explored some of the problems and challenges we faced.
Using the course materials we covered how taxation and living costs impact our lives and we got the students to work out what jobs they might like and then we got them to budget for life as a new employee in their chosen field. The experience was eye opening for many of the students as they began to realise how expensive life as an adult can be.


I have to say, as a business that exists because of schools, it was a great opportunity for SWOT to give something back and engage with the students who we found to be warm, fun and inspiring. SWOT will be keeping our eye out for some of the students who expressed an interest in IT.


Once again, many thanks to Young Enterprise London, to Selina Patel, Maureen Arhagba and most of all, the students of Year 9.


For more info on Learn to Earn see http://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/london


SWOT

Some Network Fun

Hi Gang,

We thought we'd share a link with you which is a bit of fun but, its educational too.

Way back when the SWOT team were learning Networking 101, the Peter Packet series of games helped keep us smiling through the heavy text books. .

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/packetville/pr/games.html

Thanks to Cisco for making these neat little games, and enjoy

Team SWOT

Guide to creating a WUP for your school

As the explosion of mobile devices continues unabated, should you be considering a wireless handheld usage policy in your school? 

Take a poll of your staff and students. How many of them carry a smartphone in their pockets/ bags? How many are using them, or want to use them, to read or submit school work, email, text with friends/ family or colleagues, and even access cloud-based learning applications such as Moodle?  Because so many people now use handheld computers to get so much done, schools, colleges etc are being forced to consider how they fit into their networks. And that means developing a usage policy for wireless handheld devices that your students can use during the school day and beyond.

The very first element your policy should cover is whether or not you allow staff and or students to connect to your network with their personal devices. If you want to let them check their workloads, class schedules or perhaps use your cloud-based apps and E-Learning systems on their devices, then you’ll need to figure out the detailed specifics of what data and applications will be allowed on those devices and how they can be used when connected and not connected to your network.

A wireless device usage policy is similar to an acceptable use policy (AUP) for your network. This post can help you write an AUP for your school. It is a guideline and adapted from a series of best practice articles from across the Internet, alongside our own in house experiences.

Creating a useable wireless device policy

There are a number of questions which need to be considered in a wireless handheld usage policy. Examples: 

Who can use their wireless devices on your network? 

What kind of information is allowed? 

How much control do you retain over personal devices? 

Answers to these questions must be covered in your policy to protect your institution from potential liability, security risks, and becoming noncompliant with mandated data privacy requirements. We've come across a number of questions that for us and others, seem to form a good basis on which to ground your policy:

1. What types of information can be accessed or stored on personal wireless devices? This really comes down to business-critical and confidential information versus non-critical or even public information. If you’ll allow teachers or schools admin staff to access files that are sensitive, then you’ll have to implement stricter controls in accordance with any compliance. Remember, so much important data is sent through email and stored in the cloud or even locally, it’s probably safest to expect that everyone using their smartphone will at some point access sensitive information.

It is very likely students will not be accessing data that is of a sensitive nature from schools internal systems, never the less, it is crucial that schools set out a clear framework of what's expected from the privilege of BYOD. For example, what sites and services are accessible on campus, does this differ from off campus access. 

2. Who owns the wireless devices? If your school decides to provide users with smartphones, then you own them and can dictate their use. However, if you allow either staff or students to use their own devices, you can exert less control over them. That said, you can stipulate certain conditions since the devices are connecting via your infrastructure. Namely, adhering to the rules you set in your wireless device policy that users must follow to be allowed to access your network , applications, and data with their personal devices.

3. What security measures must they take on their devices? This may be the most important condition you set. You can require people to set passwords, actively run mobile security software, like anti-virus and self-destruct applications on their smartphones and tablets. You can also ask that the devices be checked against these mandated security techniques before users are given the OK to connect to your network. There are a number of systems that can manage the on-boarding of devices on to your network and our team can help explore the options.

4. Can users sync their personal handhelds with your domain registered computers? When you sync a smartphone to a computer, its easy to transfer private data from one device to the other. This can pose a security risk if someone steals sensitive data and then leaks or gives it away. 

For both staff and students, syncing their own devices with school owned PC's etc is a path for malware and viruses to come into the network. Because of the nature of schools, users may access multiple system through out the course of the day as they move from lesson to lesson, it is possible for malware to very quickly become a major headache for in house systems and ICT admins and so careful thought should be considered before enabling campus wide systems.

5. Can people share their devices? If some staff have different access rights to schools data, you probably do not want them sharing their handhelds with each other. Any need-to-know classifications your school has given certain employees will help structure this part of your policy.

Enforcing policy

When you write your policy, make the conditions and consequences specific, but don’t name particular devices. By keeping the policy generic to “wireless handheld devices,” for instance, you can be sure that your wireless device usage policy will apply to any new technologies that make their way into your campus.

Your school may have other policies already in place that can help support and enforce the wireless device policy, such as an existing network usage policy, an information classification policy, or an anti bullying policy, but the most critical factor is educating users about the policy. Make sure everyone routinely reviews and understands what conditions must be met for them to connect their personal devices to the network, and the consequences of not meeting the conditions. 

Careful planing is key, talk to as many people as you can to seek advice, there are schools in the UK that have adopted a wireless based primary network strategy and so the experience and guidance to help you create your own policy is out there. As always the case, the SWOT team would be very happy to share our thoughts and best practice designs to assist your plans.

All the best

No more asking mum and dad

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17302710

Children in the UK prefer using Google to asking their parents or teachers when they have a question, a snapshot survey suggests

The Meru Difference

What happens if they all hit your network at the same time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SmzEpCabkpc#!

Contact our staff for more information on how Meru Networks Wireless technology can help you

By Email:

sales@swotnet.co.uk

Meru Goes Virtual in every aspect

Hi All,


Things are really moving in the Wireless space right now and our brilliant Wi-Fi Partners over at Meru are at it again.
Yesterday, Meru Networks announced a series of moves to push infrastructure in to the cloud, helping alleviate more of the barriers to deploying mobility ready system in schools and academic institutions via flexible installation models, which are capable of managing BYOD and Secure, Self Provisioned Guest Access. 


Of course we at SWOTNET have been quick to leap on this model, making use of our partners over at HRC3 who deliver an academic to academic cloud platform, with some really trick services. http://www.hrc3.org.uk/


What's really neat? Now we can offer fully loaded wireless systems without any of the headache of on premise hardware and all that entails. This is great news for your potential wireless plans. 

You can choose to deploy your Meru solutions in your campus datacenter or off your premises, leveraging cloud-based offerings from the low cost and academically focused HRC3 Platform. Alongside Meru, SWOTNET also plans to offer these applications as subscription-based, cloud-hosted private application services (PAS) and so we can look to provision location and identity services without the need to deploy additional hardware. 

Now we can run all of these systems by way of subscription it means; no more end of life hardware to manage as all systems in our cloud offering will be running on the very latest Meru technology. No more hardware support contracts to maintain. Less commitment to power meaning schools estates get lower energy bills. , The cost savings versus on premise kit are set to make a huge difference to current and future ICT spends.

This is a game changing move from Meru since it greatly reduces the footprint of mobility estates and allows the:

·         Reuse of existing servers.

·         Deploy multiple virtual appliances on the same hardware platform.

·         Employ low-cost commodity servers over higher end applicances.

·         Reduce hardware support, power, cooling, and rack space requirements helping meet green initatives.

·         Ride the cost-performance technology curve and evolution of x86 platforms.

·         Consolidate networking applications onto a single system for remote campus integration.

·         Choose best-of-breed appliances and avoid vendor lock-in.

·         Expedite product acquisition and streamline service deployment.

·         Obtain cloud-delivery benefits by hosting your virtualized Meru solution in your datacenter or private cloud.

Please do reach out to our SWOT team if you have plans to deploy wireless to support your teaching and learning. We have many years experience and have deployed many thousands of access points throughout the UK education system. You can reach us by email: sales@swotnet.co.uk

BYOD elevates pressure on budget cuts

Hi All,


We've been pretty busy over the last couple of months, helping our clients move away from proprietary campus and classroom management systems, enabling wireless, consolidating LAN infrastructure and looking at ways to squeeze more value from shrinking budgets across the board.
Many of the themes of our blogs are speared towards how we can help our academic clients save money, whilst still enabling world class IT systems to support all.

One of the big concepts you are no doubt hearing about in the IT news and probably amongst your peers is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). BYOD is a model which allows any business, be that a multinational corporation, SMB or a university, college or school, the opportunity for staff/ students to bring in devices that they own personally and use them to access resource which allows them to work freely throughout the day.


Of course, there are many considerations when investigating BYOD as a option for your own institutions. A lot of the information on the Internet tends to be very conceptualised and this often leaves readers confused since the nuts and bolts are not clearly defined. If you find yourself agreeing, our advice is to reach out to our staff.

Much of the BYOD data is littered with security concerns which can appear alarming to IT technicians whom have previously considered the idea of unknown devices on the network as a serious hazard.  
Take the recent survey by ISACA. The 2011 ISACA IT Risk/Reward Barometer which found, more than half of information technology leaders in the U.S. believe that any employee-owned mobile device poses a greater risk to the enterprise than mobile devices supplied by the company. 

“Device mobility, wireless access, personal applications and the high risk of lost or stolen hand-held devices creates a need for added defense against data loss, unauthorized access and malware,” said Paul McClanahan, research analyst and partner at the Boston Research Group.

On top of all the concerns about security, IT technicians also fear an increased overhead from users struggling to connect their many and varied devices to systems and applications.


Given all of the above, how on earth is BYOD going to help academics? 


For us, one of the leading benefits of moving towards BYOD is that it lets staff/ students and organizations take advantage of technology innovations at limited cost to the organization. I will explain this statement as again I am aware this is one of those conceptual moments.

Not having to continually keep up with device improvements via desktop/ laptop refresh cycles can free up the necessary funds to actively pursue more strategic IT spend targets.

In the past, hundreds of thousands of pounds have gone in to PC refresh programs across the UK academic vertical and the constant march and improvement of these devices means this process could go and on forever. Constantly having to improve the fixed PC's etc in our computer labs and classrooms has left us all with less money to spend on the foundation infrastructure, primarily the network. 

Overtime, as more and more devices have  been added to the network, the foundations of many are beginning  to creak and slow under the demand.

Despite the warning of slow network access, drop off, app fails and classroom disruption, most of the investment in schools is still spent on ever newer user devices and not improvements in the network foundation. For us, having a solid network which has been well designed is a 1st base requirement and key to successful deployment of technology to support all business cases.

Mobility and Video are big drivers in terms of network traffic today and this will only increase the loads on our often outdated, under gunned, or poorly designed networks as we integrate this traffic in to day to day teaching and learning.

The SWOT team think its vitally important for schools to be preparing themselves for the demand today. BYOD can help with network performance since we can refocus the spending, enabling improvements to the foundation infrastructure.

The impacts of a well designed and future proofed network will be felt campus wide and so in terms of bang for bucks, network spends can be rarely matched for ROI.

Allowing students to bring their own devices in to schools, that they are confident and comfortable with, removes a small but annoying technology barrier. Students often have newer and faster devices at home than their own schools/ colleges can supply and this can cause some contention and disruption. Having students bringing in their own kit relieves this barrier, and pressures on any existing school owned hardware and devices. Most people have an interest to care for their own technology and so instances of accidental damage will fall less firmly on the shoulders of academic budgets.

BYOD installs a sense of ownership that can help secure a culture of learning ownership too.

Of course, allowing student devices can create its own problems and so the SWOT team suggests organizations should educate staff and students on their security requirements and implement a comprehensive BYOD policy aligned with risk profile and acceptable use.

We have a series of helpful guidelines which we will gladly share. These have been developed with other schools and advocates of BYOD as a way to help frame discussions and assist with the construction of usage policies etc in your own institutions. 

If you are thinking seriously about BYOD, do reach out via our contact us option on the SWOTNET web page. Our team will help you make sense of the model and any hardware, software which can help the move.

I am sure we will have plenty to add to BYOD and we look forwards to keeping you up to date with any changes in the technology that we see as benefiting the academic sector.

For a peek at the stuff we think is great today, please see links below.

http://www.merunetworks.com/ps/identity-manager/index.php

http://www.arubanetworks.com/solutions/bring-your-own-device/?click=homebanner

http://www.forescout.com/

http://www.bradfordnetworks.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYlJnJhTVg&feature=youtube_gdata

Team SWOT