Securly - how does it work?

I thought it would be good to post a bit about Securly, which is our web filter. We often get asked about this and sharing what it does and how it works around this time of year seems appropriate.

This tool ensures that staff and students access appropriate content on the web. We filter in two ways. In our elementary buildings, content is filtered based up IP address. This is done to allow our young learners to not have to use a username and password to log into devices. The filtering is consistent with all devices in these buildings, no matter if staff or student. In our 5-12 buildings, staff and student sign into their Google accounts and filtering is done based upon their user group.

We use Securly's certificate based dns filtering solution. This requires devices on our network to install a certificate or an extension to access the internet. Information about installing the certificate can be found at http://www.prairiepride.org/procedures/securly.php.

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Passwords - oh passwords!

We just recently sent this message to our staff: Greetings! In our continuing efforts to create a more technology secure environment, we are going to begin to enforce the following rules for STAFF passwords in Google. All passwords must be a minimum length of 12 characters. We recommend passwords that are passphrases, for example “ilovechipsandsalsa”. While we are enforcing a password length requirement, at this time we are not requiring complexity through special characters, or symbols, or upper case letters. All staff will be required to create a new password every 180 days. We will begin enforcing these policies on Wednesday November 16th. When you log into your Google account, you will be prompted to update your password. A few other items regarding this change. Infinite Campus passwords will not be affected. Teacher MacBook logins, office staff’s windows logins, any business office/HR logins, or other website logins will not be affected. Para tablets, chromebooks, or ot...

When I leave the district - Using Google Takeout

I actually took this picture myself at a lake my family visits each summer.. quite the sunset! Any who, this post is targeted at folks who are planning to leave the district , whether that be due to retirement or another opportunity. When you leave our district, we suspend your Google account. This usually happens after our last teacher contract day or when we are notified of you leaving the district over the summer. When the account is suspended, other users will be able to access all shared documents with your account as normal. One year after the account is suspended, the account is then deleted. Then all documents will be deleted that the user owned. Other users will no longer be able to access those shared documents and they will be gone forever. Please make sure you move any needed content to a Shared Drive that your team will need in the future. Please see this POST on how to do that. If you want to copy any or all of your "content" "see Google docs and email...

Campus update

We get new updates to Infinite Campus every couple of weeks. One of the newest updates now checks your password against known data breaches. If you password is one that is compromised, you'll get a notification like this when signing into Campus: In order to change your Campus password, you need to go to Account Settings in Campus Tools and select Edit your password.

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