Data is always valuable to someone – and different people will attribute value to it in different ways. As an example, a School Business Manager may see their emails as the most valuable, a teacher may give top value to their lesson plans, a student to their coursework.
Having a full and up-to-date backup of all data is therefore the only way to protect everybody’s interests.
Data backup and disaster recovery strategies are vital for all organisations and should not be overlooked just because they may be expensive.
Why backups of education data are especially important?
With school budgets being squeezed on an annual basis, it can be tempting to cut corners. But it is important that all assets are protected and treated accordingly. This includes physical assets (buildings, computers, projectors etc.) but also digital assets (student records, lesson plans, revision resources, coursework).
Schools have a unique responsibility due to the sensitivity of the data they hold (often about minors). This is why schools and educational organisations have extensive legislation to comply with when it comes to data.
One of the pieces of legislation that schools must comply with is the Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS) – most recently updated in 2015. Part of this states that all Local Authority maintained schools are required to backup their data off-site on a daily basis in order to protect their ICT assets.
Further legislation that is relevant to schools in particular includes the GDPR act that came into force in May 2018 (and is in operation Europe-wide). Backup and disaster recovery is essential under GDPR – in fact, it requires an organisation’s sensitive data to be accessible at all times, including in the event of a physical or technical incident.
SIMS
SIMS is a very popular management information system (provided by CAPITA) that is used at over 20,000 schools across the United Kingdom. It provides the tools to help manage a number of daily aspects of school-life in an efficient and simple way. A complete SIMS backup should be done as often as possible to ensure that data is kept up-to-date and secure at all times.
SAFE backups
SAFE backups are cloud-based, incredibly secure, and are suitable for all levels in the education sector. They enable access to key data in an easy-to-use and safe way. At SAFE, we have been providing backup solutions for educational establishments for 15 years, covering a variety of data requirements, including SIMS.
All data is transferred using up to 448-bit Blowfish Encryption and remains encrypted until you later need to restore it.
We offer full Bare Metal Backups (StorageCraft), Windows System Backups, or Virtual Machine backups. We have two UK-based, ISO 27001 accredited data centres.
All backups are monitored and our teams are alerted to any failed backups.
