FILESTREAM – EXPERTS IN SUPPORTING THE EDUCATION SECTOR

Does your organisation deal with safeguarding issues?

Does your organisation have to care for those with special educational needs?

Does your team worry about keeping sensitive documents safe & secure?

Have you been the victim of a data breach or cyber attack?

If so, we can help. We are Filestream and we are one of the UK’s leading document management companies. Based in Berkshire, we work with schools, colleges and universities across the UK to securely streamline their document management to reduce their risks around data or GDPR breaches and cyber attack.

For more than 30 years we’ve been one of the top providers of secure, electronic document management software. The education sector is an area of supreme importance to us.

We already work with educational organisations including University of Hull, Coventry University, Cardiff & Vale College, Cirencester College, Redhill Academy Trust, Nottingham and numerous academy trusts.

We want to support more educational establishments and help them to be more efficient, effective and secure in how they manage online paperwork. We have won multiple awards for our work in document management including the Low Code, No Code in the Document Management Awards 2023 (the second time of winning this prestigious award).

Why is this important?

It’s important because of the clear and present danger of online attack in several forms. Evidence shows this type of risk is growing.

According to the government’s Cyber Securities Breaches Survey 2024 (Education Institutions Annex), looking just at education, a large percentage of schools and colleges are experiencing cyber attacks. Of those organisations which took part in that survey:

*52 per cent of primary schools reported a cyber breach or attack in the past year.
*71 per cent of secondary schools reported a cyber breach or attack in the past year.
*86 per cent of further education colleges reported a cyber breach or attack in the past year.
*97 per cent of higher education establishments reported a cyber breach or attack in the past year.

Higher education organisations:

This survey shows that six in ten of higher education institutions being negatively impacted by a cyber issue – so the risks are huge:

*All of the higher education institutions which took part in this survey said that they had experienced phishing attacks in the past year.
*90 per cent said they’d had ‘impersonation’ attacks.
*77 per cent had had experiences with viruses, spyware or malware.
*20 per cent had had unauthorised access from parties outside of the organisation.
*27 per cent reported unauthorised access of files or networks by staff.
*47 per cent reported other types of cyber attack.

Further education organisations:

The survey shows that 78 per cent of FE organisations reported ‘impersonation’ attacks.

32 per cent reported viruses, spyware or malware.

16 per cent reported other types of breaches or attacks.

*An “impersonation attack’ is a form of fraud in which attackers pose as a known or trusted person within an organisation to dupe an employee into transferring money into a fraudulent account or trick them into sharing sensitive information, or revealing log-in credentials that attackers than use. It’s also known as a ‘spoofing’ attack.

Schools:

According to the 2024 survey, schools are less likely to suffer attacks except for phishing where:

*92 per cent of primary schools reported an attack.
*89 per cent of secondary schools reported an attack.

*A phishing attack is when attackers send scam emails or text messages which contain links to malicious websites which may contain malware which can sabotage systems and organisations.

How can Filestream help?

The benefits of working with Filestream is that we have your back when it comes to documentation and that leads to so many other things which teams can find time-consuming.

This includes:

*Ensuring adherence as all documents are GDPR complaint.
*Secure software which includes encryption.
*Disaster Recovery protection when it comes to documents.
*Integration with existing systems.
*Document processing capabilities (including WorkFlow)
*Absolute scalability

Our software will keep ALL of your documents safe and protected from data breaches. Each document is encrypted. This includes online paperwork such as:

*SEN paperwork
*Safeguarding documents
*HR documents.
*Student documents

Our document management system means that your organisation’s paperwork is secure, easily accessible by all appropriate staff, flexible in that staff can be given access to the files they need and not given access to files which are not relevant to their role.

Files can be found easily through searching based on meta-data. So documents can be found using their titles; the author or the date it was created.

Documents can also be accessed via the Filestream system downloaded on to an organisation’s existing IT system, via an app or via web address. This means that staff can access documents where ever they are – at home, at an event, on the road or on a trip.

Main advantages of working with Filestream:

*Improved efficiency – documents can be shared within departments, between organisations and with various relevant audience which could include parents or guardians.

*Increased security – for example, teachers might be able to view student records but they wouldn’t be able to edit them whereas an administrator would have full access to those records.

*Financial aid paperwork – the system keeps track of this and can be set up to send reminders to ensure paperwork is submitted on time.

*Improved collaboration between staff members – it’s easy for members to find and share documents (within their permitted boundaries) and it offers the ability to make comments and add annotations which can make collaboration easier.

*Reduced costs – Filestream can help an educational organisation save money by reducing reliance on paper documents. Savings can come from reducing printing costs, labour costs around managing paper documents, storage costs and even postal costs.

Get in touch:

If you are interested in finding out more and would like a free demonstration of our system then please get in touch: