Protecting your Digital Technology

Review – Do this regularly and work with your ICT support service to understand what needs addressing and when. Budget on a 3-year plan and allow for contingencies and rising ICT costs.

Take Action – ICT replacement, maintenance and security are essential for protecting your data. Heed advice from your ICT Support service.

1. Our broadband network firewall is a network security device that monitors traffic to or from your network. It allows or blocks traffic based on a defined set of security rules.
2. Security Monitoring: JISC CSIRT provides extra security monitoring to help protect educational institutions in the UK.
3. Incident Management: Lancashire County Council Education Digital Services works with JISC CSIRT to manage any security incidents or risks identified, ensuring the safety of schools and students.
4. DDoS Protection (Distributed Denial-of-Service): Schools connected to our broadband network get additional protection against DDoS attacks, thanks to JISC CSIRT.
5. Liaison: In case of any cyber incidents, Lancashire County Council liaises with JISC CSIRT on behalf of the schools to handle the situation.

Our broadband network firewall offers Dual ISP (Internet Service Provider) grade firewalls located at different data centres. These give excellent protection, performance and resilience. 

Our Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) is now included in your Broadband and Online Services bundle. PDNS translates web addresses into machine-readable IP addresses and blocks access to malicious domains by preventing this translation. This stops malware from sending data to criminals and protects staff and pupils from harmful websites. PDNS enhances your school's cyber defenses against malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, viruses, and spyware.

For schools that purchase servers through us, DOME allows us to monitor your server hardware and to apply updates to firmware and drivers. Where possible we will use DOME to monitor your server and proactively address imminent hardware failures before they occur, minimising disruption to schools. We will also update drivers and firmware on Dell servers helping maintain reliability and minimise disruption.