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Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Network Guest Access for Education

- 06 January 2012Smoothwall

Many students and teachers now have higher specification communications devices at home and in their pockets than they are supplied with on the school campus - how can you keep them safe on-line at school ...

Bring your own device, and still keep your network secure

King Canute had it easy.

Many students and teachers now have higher specification communications devices at home and in their pockets than they are supplied with on the school campus.

We all know that the lines between work, social and play are becoming blurred as they converge online.  The constant pressure on budgets, curriculum,  legislation, people and time will continue to increase - and, we are just at the start of the process.  Education needs to keep up and help equip students for the change in the way we all live.  King Canute had it easy by comparison - he only had to contend with the tides.

So, let’s get pragmatic.  There are no silver bullets, magic spells or all encompassing one-click solutions to making online services safe for students and staff.  Especially for the increasing number of private mobile devices that are appearing on your campus.  Creating an environment that encourages your staff, guests and students to use a safe, filtered and reliable Wi-Fi service will reliably protect the majority of them.  Those that want to go ‘off piste’ will - and there’s not much you can do to protect them, especially if they are using 3G or unfiltered public services.


Five simple steps to delivering safer guest network access

Step one. Provide good quality Wi-Fi to guests, staff and students
If it is cheaper than 3G, faster and not overly restrictive then the majority will use for every day web use.  If they are using your service it can be tied to the school Authentication - and, most importantly your filtering and control policies.

Step two. Strengthen security at the perimeter
You can’t ensure that all devices that enter your guest network are clean and have properly maintained anti-malware.  You can however protect the network using internal firewalls and use reliable anti-malware scanning of guest and user web traffic at the perimeter.

Step three. Use effective DfE / Becta Accredited web filtering technology
Over-blocking known safe content causes frustration - not blocking unsafe content causes distress (and potential litigation).  Work with the best dynamic content filtering technology to reduce the risks.  You can then deliver great service to your users which will help to keep them safely inside the fence.

Step four. Create ‘who, what, where and when’ user policies that encourage and reward responsible behaviour.
Design your Acceptable Usage Policies (AUP) to have clear rules - e.g. Facebook at breaks and before & after core hours - then everybody then knows where they stand, and what is and isn’t acceptable.

Step five. Review and update your policies as you go along
The web and your users behaviour changes constantly so you’ll need to fine-tune your service regularly.  To do this you’ll need effective and easy to use reporting tools - from trends to individual users and sites - remember the old maxim ‘data isn’t information’ so a system that just spits out raw logs isn’t going to help you much.



The commercial bit. At Smoothwall we’ve already got a solution that brings together network guest access and ‘bring your own device’ schemes and firmly places them under your control.  You can transparently authenticate your users, apply the right types of filtering policy at the right time and easily report on their activity.  We’re specialists in education web filtering and control, we’re based in the UK and we’re nice people to deal with.  If you are looking to protect your users and network we are a great place to start.