Category: ICT Moray

To ensure ICT equipment orders are received in the current financial year, deadlines for receipt of orders from educational establishments are as follows:

If TMC ICT receives an order…..	..we shall…
…prior to or on Wednesday 24 February 2016	… guarantee delivery of goods before the end of the financial year, subject to product availability
…between Thursday 25 February 2016 and Friday 11 March 2016	…make every effort to process the order before the end of the financial year (again subject to product availability), but no guarantees can be made regarding delivery time
…on or after Monday 14th March 2016	…process the order in the next financial year

 

Establishments can greatly assist in the end of year process by ensuring / or be aware that:

All ICT Hardware orders which are placed have all of the necessary details.

Hardware may not be installed until the next financial year but may need to be delivered to the school. The school may have to store the equipment until the installation can be scheduled.

The Education Electronic catalogue is available at http://edcat.moray.gov.uk/eshop/home.php  and has full details of the equipment available. Orders can be placed online, by emailing ict.servicedesk@moray.gov.uk

Please do not hesitate to contact TMC ICT Servicedesk via the online form if you have any enquiries regarding equipment specifications, prices, procurement deadlines or other ICT related issues.

The Education Catalogue (http://edcat.moray.gov.uk/) will be temporarily unavailable due to the change over of the Government Contracts.

Laptops and PCs are no longer available on the old contract but as soon as full details are available with regards to the new equipment we will update the site and re-instate it.

Whilst the site is down schools can still request equipment and quotes via the Service Desk.

Update 22 January:- The Catalouge is now available again and has been updated with the new models.

The current speed issues with the internet are being experienced due an issue with the JANET network. These issues are affecting multiple Authorities and JANET engineers are investigating the problem as a matter of urgency.

ICT will keep schools up to date with the progress.

UPDATE 2nd Dec:-  JANET have now verified that the fault was fixed over night and normal service has now been resumed.

UPDATE 4th Dec:- The issue has re-occurred and JANET are working on a resolution.

UPDATE 7th Dec:- JANET believed that the issue was cleared over the weekend, however our monitoring this monitoring is showing that there may still be a bandwidth issue. This has been escalated within SWAN as it is affecting all schools in Moray.

UPDATE 8th Dec:- JANET have confirmed they have been subject to another DDoS attack causing unplanned interruptions across the JANET network, resulting in intermittent service to all their customers. Their Network and Computer Security Incident Response Teams are currently working to resolve the incident.

UPDATE 10th Dec:- After a good day yesterday TMC have noticed that the bandwidth has once again been affected. This has been escalated to JANET.

TMC monitoring of the local network does not currently show that Moray is being affected but will keep a close eye on the situation.

UPDATE 15th Dec:- The bandwidth now appears to be stable although schools are using much more than normal which could be down to factors such as the live Launch of the British Astronaut. TMC continually monitor bandwidth and should there be any further issues we will update this site with information.

UPDATE 17th Dec:- After a good day yesterday where schools made a “New record” use of the bandwidth available, we are once again experiencing difficulties. This has been escalated within SWAN and with Education Scotland.

Schools have been experiencing issues first thing in the morning with the staff email system. Schools normally notice the issue because external emails that they were expecting have not been delivered. This backlog of emails is being cause by the PureMessage filtering system.

To ensure that schools are protected from new threats the PureMessage system updates on an almost nightly basis, allowing it to keep up with any new threats that have been released since the last update.

Unfortunately something is going wrong with this automated process which runs at night. TMC are not the only customers affected and PureMessage are working on a resolution for all of their customers.

ICT are manually doing the updates after a failure to ensure that schools remain protected from even the newest threats. We will keep you updated on the progress of the resolution.

 

Many Schools experienced mixed issues relating to some, or all of, the following:-  email, Wi-Fi, Printing and using the internet. This led to a great deal of frustration within the classrooms first thing on a Monday morning.

Because of the mixed nature of the issues being reported it was difficult to pinpoint the exact problem. However after investigation it was found that there was a failure with one of the Education core servers, Myschool01 which hosts:

PCounter:- Which was leading to the printing issues,

Radius Authentication Services:– Which secures the Wi-Fi network to authorised users and devices only.

Once this was discovered the problem was resolved within 30 minutes.

The email issues were unrelated but was also resolved at the same time.

If anyone is still experiencing problems please restart your machine as this will re-authenticate you. If you are still experiencing problems after this please raise a call via the online form.

ICT apologise for any disruption this outage may have caused.

 

 

 

The email filtering system is working hard to minimise the annoying and sometimes dangerous emails which get through to schools.

The following information is from Tuesday 25th August 2015. During that day there were two Spear-phishing attacks against Moray schools, both of these were blocked.

The first one involved 1041 emails which were sent to schools and claimed to contain an invoice for the recipient at the school. The attachment on the emails contained a macro which would have initiated a malware install.

The second attack was a batch of 577 emails claiming to contain details of the target schools’ VISA transactions for the month. This email looked genuine and even had a footer which claimed that the email “has been checked for viruses”, again it contained a word document with a downloader macro.

A little over half of the email into schools at the moment is being blocked as either SPAM or Suspected SPAM (Normally Phishing emails).

The SPAM filter is working hard to protect schools and to minimise the amount of annoying and unsafe email which reaches them. As always email users are encouraged to ensure that they only open emails, especially with attachments, that are from senders that they know.

What is SPAM?

SPAM is unsolicited Email which is the bulk sending of nearly identical messages to numerous recipients via email. At best such emails are simply an annoyance, however increasingly SPAM Emails contain disguised links to malicious websites, or have attachments containing malware.

Why Do I Keep Getting SPAM?

Unfortunately the SPAM filters will never stop all SPAM reaching the school. The tighter the SPAM filter is set up the higher the chance that genuine emails will be blocked. ICT receive multiple calls from both sides i.e. SPAM that has made it through and Genuine emails which have been blocked.

I have just come back from the summer break and I have more SPAM than usual.

Many schools are currently experiencing large amounts of Spam which has built up over the holiday period. Normally the SPAM that makes it through to a school mail box is only a small % of the actual SPAM that has been sent to the school. There was however a 2 day period when the filters were not on after an automatic update. This has led to you receiving all of the SPAM for those two days and this added to the summer backlog makes it look as if the SPAM filters are no longer working.

What If I receive notification of a blocked email which I believe is Genuine?

If a “Genuine” email has been blocked please follow the procedure in the email for it to be released.

I am still receiving more SPAM than I want.

If you continue to receive lots of SPAM please see the tips below which will help to minimize your future SPAM. Please do not raise a call with ICT with regards to SPAM unless it is highly offensive or poses a risk to staff or pupils. Please delete all other SPAM after blocking it as per Tip 1 below this will then put all subsequent emails from this sender into your Junk E-Mail folder so that they will no longer show up in your In-Box. However please remember that you will need to regularly empty your Junk email folder or your account will become full.

1. Take advantage of the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook     Office Outlook helps to mitigate the problem of spam by providing an additional level of Junk E-mail Filter, which automatically evaluates incoming messages and sends those identified as spam to the Junk E-mail folder.
2. Limit the places where you post your e-mail address     Be cautious about posting your e-mail address on public Web sites, such as newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and so forth. When visiting public sites, you might want to use an e-mail address that is different from your main e-mail address. Remove your e-mail address from your personal Web site. Whenever you list or link to your e-mail address, you increase your chances of being spammed.
3. Review the privacy policies of Web sites     When you sign up for online banking, shopping, or newsletters, review the privacy policy of the site carefully before you reveal your e-mail address or other personal information. Look for a link or section (usually at the bottom of the Web site’s home page) called “Privacy Statement,” “Privacy Policy,” “Terms and Conditions,” or “Terms of Use.” If the Web site does not explain how your personal information will be used, consider not using the services at that site.
4. Watch out for check boxes that are already selected     When you shop online, companies sometimes add a check box that is already selected, which indicates that it is fine with you if the company sells or gives your e-mail address to other businesses (or “third parties”). Clear this check box so that your e-mail address is not shared.
5. Don’t reply to spam     Never reply to an e-mail message — not even to unsubscribe from a mailing list — unless you know and trust the sender, such as when the e-mail message comes from a service, an online store, or newsletter that you have signed up with. Answering spam just confirms to the spammer that your e-mail address is an active one.
6. Don’t use your “Work” email address for “Personal” emails. This reduces the overall email count going through the Schools email system.
7. If a company uses e-mail messages to ask for personal information, don’t respond by sending a message     Most legitimate companies will not ask for personal information to be sent in e-mail. Be suspicious if they do. Such a request could be a spoofed e-mail message disguised to look like a legitimate one. This tactic is known as phishing. If the possible spam appears to be sent by a company that you do business with, then call the company to verify that they sent it, but don’t use any phone number that is provided in the e-mail. Instead, use a number that you find by using other means, such as directory assistance, a statement, or a bill. If the request is a legitimate one, the company’s customer service representative should be able to assist you.
8. Don’t contribute to a charity in response to a request sent in e-mail     Unfortunately, some spammers prey on your goodwill. If you receive an e-mail appeal from a charity, treat it as spam. If the charity is one that you want to support, locate their telephone number or Web site to find out how you can make a contribution.
9. Don’t forward chain e-mail messages     Besides increasing overall e-mail volume, by forwarding a chain e-mail message you might be furthering a hoax — and meanwhile, you lose control over who sees your e-mail address.

Before the summer break schools were experiencing intermittent issues when trying to access the internet. These problems were traced back to the saturation of the main link at the core of the network.

We can now report that this link has now been doubled in size.

This will help alleviate the intermittent filtering and logging in issues which were being experienced by some schools. However until data usage levels become clear it is advisable that schools should continue to ensure that internet usage is prioritised for Learning & Teaching purposes.