DfE Cloud Solution Standards
Support your overall school strategy and transform learning with cloud-based solutions.
Wavenet Education
Alternative to locally hosted systems
By utilising cloud-based solutions, you lessen the need for local servers and can support your school or college’s overall strategy. You will save money with the reduction of onsite equipment, energy, support, and licensing costs, take advantage of low-cost or free cloud services, and allow all users to work more flexibly and collaboratively. The more cloud solutions you use, the more you will benefit in the areas highlighted in the DfE standard.
Cloud solutions will also improve reliability, business continuity and the safety and security of your systems, by increasing your resilience to cyber-attacks.
ID and access management tools
Many cloud-based solutions work independently from each other, requiring multiple logins and passwords. To simplify login organisation and management when users join and leave, you are advised to utilise a central ID and access management tool whereby each user has one login. This will fulfill data protection and safeguarding responsibilities, whilst increasing your cyber security.
Managing access to certain systems based on groups or by creating roles will ensure all users have the right levels of access to the right systems.
Range of Devices
Cloud solutions should work on a range of devices and be available as and when needed. This makes it easy for both staff and students to work with data from anywhere, using different systems. The poor or unreliable availability of cloud solutions could have a significant impact on the smooth running of your school or college.
Cloud solutions run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Be sure that you understand both how and when your cloud solutions need to be accessed by users, and we will work to meet your required needs.
Data Protection Legislation
Your school or college must comply with data protection legislation to ensure all data is handled legally. With personal or sensitive information, a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) should be carried out, and extra security measures will be required to meet statutory data protection and UK GDPR requirements. These measures could include encryption, password protection, or more restricted access - all cloud-based systems should follow the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) cloud security principles.
When partnered with Wavenet, we will work alongside your data protection officer (DPO) to support any data protection issues such as data retention and sharing. The DfE states that all data should be stored and processed in the UK or EU only, and Wavenet is a UK-based company.
Data Backup Provision
The most common risk of cloud data loss is accidental or deliberate data deletion by users. Loss of data can lead to a data breach or obstruction of critical business operations. To comply with this DfE standard, you must determine the data backup provision that you require for each solution based on the data it will store. Consider sensitivity, its importance to normal operations, the impact if it were temporarily or permanently unavailable, and how long you could be without data before it becomes an issue.
The DfE standards advise that for critical data, you use the 3-2-1 rule – at least 3 copies on 2 devices and 1 offsite. Your data protection officer (DPO) should know which data is critical, as well as how long different types of data should be kept for.
Wavenet’s Key Recommendations
With Wavenet, our scalable, on-demand cloud solutions can be tailored to your school or college’s individual needs, providing you with proactive support that will meet both the DfE standards, and the demands of the education environment.
DfE aligned solutions
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