Protecting your School's Network Manager from Stress and Burnout

In my recent blog, Why Every Independent School needs a Super-Hero, I talked about the wide ranging variety of roles that we expect our network managers to fulfil, from support provider and trainer, right through to network architect, project manager, cyber security expert and much more besides. 

At this time of year, when for many of us our thoughts are beginning to turn to a welcome break from work, let's spare a thought for our network managers who are often planning for one of their busiest periods in the school year – the summer holidays.  

Whilst we are enjoying the sunshine, many of them will be immersed in technically complex projects to upgrade the school’s network infrastructure. Now don't get me wrong, for many network managers, this is an exciting period of the year when they get to experience new technology and increase their technical skill set.  However, it is important that all of us get a break from time to time, and as employers we all have a duty of care towards our staff to ensure that that is the case.

So, if not during the summer holidays, then when will your network manager get a break this year?  This can be a tricky challenge, since once the summer holiday projects are complete, and school is back in full swing, we need our network managers to be in school more than ever, to provide support, hand holding and training, especially during that back-to-school phase, when invariably passwords will have been forgotten, there will be large numbers of new pupils, some new staff and  some snagging issues from the holiday upgrade projects.  As a result, I see many network managers who become overloaded, and in some cases this can even lead to serious health issues.

One answer can be to partner with an experienced schools ICT provider, who can provide a flexible holiday cover support contract for your network manager, giving network managers the time and uninterrupted rest they need to recharge their batteries, whilst giving schools the reassurance that their ICT systems are still safely supported.  Such contracts can also provide a useful backstop for the network manager at other times, by providing them with extra resources and skills to call upon during what could otherwise be stressful situations, such as getting to the bottom of a particularly thorny problem, or providing day-to-day support when they are tied up on project work.

So while you are relaxing by the pool this summer, do spare a thought for our hardworking network managers.  

If you would like more information about EntrustIT’s support services for schools, including holiday cover for Network Managers, please do not hesitate to contact me on 0330 002 0045, email schools@entrustIT.co.uk or visit our website http://www.entrustit.co.uk/our-specialisms/education/

How would your Independent School cope with 22 Hours of ICT Downtime?

In the wake of British Airways catastrophic IT Failure which left so many passengers stranded at airports at the start of half term, I thought it would be timely today to talk about disaster recovery.

As anyone who has ever experienced network downtime will know, it is amazing how crippling an ICT system failure is to a school, and how far reaching the consequences can be. Not only does an outage create classroom and administrative operational chaos, it can also have serious consequences for the school’s reputation, particularly where there is loss of critical data such as pupils’ coursework, or a breach of security around confidential pupil data.

Whilst many schools I talk to tend to associate ICT downtime with large events such as fires or floods, the reality is that the majority of ICT downtime has much more mundane causes which can include hardware failures, loss of power, cyber security breaches (such as ransomware attacks) and software failures. And in many cases the downtime is considerable, with the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2016 study showing that the average length of unplanned downtime was 22 hours. Indeed the situation seems to be worsening this year, with ICT downtime caused by ransomware attacks in particular often running into a week or more.

And while many of us can work around a short system outage, when such outages are extending into days or even weeks there can be a serious impact on the school’s operations and reputation. As such, it is critical that the senior leadership team have a thorough understanding of their risk management processes and contingency procedures around network resilience, backups and disaster recovery.

So is it enough to have a disaster recovery plan? Sadly I fear not. I’m sure BA had a disaster recovery plan, but how well did it work when it was used in anger? For many schools, I find the disaster recovery plan that was put together some years ago and has sat in the fireproof safe ever since, without testing or updating. My experience is that this document needs to be constantly evolving, as our use of technology in education has moved on apace, and what was an acceptable recovery plan a couple of years ago may now be totally inadequate. In addition, our systems are constantly changing, with software updates and security fixes being installed on a regular basis, all of which can impact on the technical success of a recovery.

In order to ensure ongoing relevance, I always recommend that schools continually re-assess and test their plans around resilience, backup and disaster recovery, against the operational needs of their school and their changing use of technology. Some points to consider would include:-

• How long could you afford for each of your various ICT systems to be down for? 
• How much data and email, if any, could you afford to lose?  
• When did you last try a test restore of your data or email? Did it work?
• Have you tried a test of your full disaster recovery plan lately? Did it work? How long did it take? How much data was lost? Did the results demonstrate that recovery times and data loss met your school’s current operational requirements as defined above? 
• Do your backup and disaster recovery plans meet your forthcoming GDPR compliance obligations? 
• Where are your backups held? Would an incident like a fire or a ransomware attack wipe out your backups as well as your live systems? 
• In the event of a major disaster, what hardware would you restore your backups on to? 
• How would your school operate in the period whilst the systems were down? 
• How would you communicate details of an outage with parents, staff, pupils and the public to minimise the reputational damage to your school?

 If you are unclear of the answers to any of these questions, it may be time to review your processes and procedures around disaster recovery planning to ensure your school is not exposed to undue risk in this area. If you have any questions or would like information on ways EntrustIT can help, please do not hesitate to contact me on 0330-002-0045 or email schools@entrustit.co.uk