Nine reasons why integrating your firewall with Fastvue enhances your KCSiE reporting

Ensuring the digital safety of students and adhering to the Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) guidelines is a legal requirement for UK schools and their safeguarding teams.

KCSiE guidelines set out what schools and colleges in England must do to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18.

Every educational institute faces the challenge of choosing the right tools to meet these requirements. While there are several education-marketed solutions available, they're not always the simplest, or most cost-effective option. 

So, in nine simple points, let's discuss why integrating a firewall with Fastvue enhances your KCSiE safeguarding reporting, keeping students safe and ensuring you remain compliant.

9 Ways Fastvue's firewall monitoring tool enhances KCSiE reporting

Compliance with network filtering and monitoring requirements

KCSiE guidelines state that schools have a statutory responsibility to 'keep children and young people safe online as well as offline’ and that schools and colleges should have ‘appropriate filtering and monitoring systems in place'. While certain education-marketed solutions may offer both filtering and safeguarding features, they often lack the robust cybersecurity capabilities and system performance required to meet modern demand. 

By combining global-leading firewalls recognised in Gartner's Magic Quadrant with Fastvue's dedicated safeguarding reporting, schools can achieve the ultimate solution.

These firewalls provide enterprise-grade protection, while Fastvue bridges the safeguarding gap with detailed, actionable reports and alerts, ensuring compliance with both the Government's Cybersecurity Policy and the requirements of KCSiE, particularly around monitoring and reporting.

Enterprise-grade network security and enhanced reporting

Combining a robust firewall with Fastvue provides greater security by leveraging the firewall's enterprise-grade protection while offering easy-to-understand reporting. Fastvue translates complex firewall log data into easy-to-understand reports, enabling Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) to effectively monitor and address online safety concerns, a key component of KCSiE mandates.

Firewall log analysis without cloud dependency

Fastvue does not require cloud connectivity, ensuring all data remains within the school's controlled environment and reducing exposure to threats associated with external data transfer and storage. This aligns with KCSiE guidelines, which emphasise the importance of implementing secure monitoring systems and protecting sensitive student information. By keeping data on-premise, Fastvue supports schools in maintaining compliance with data protection laws like GDPR while enabling effective safeguarding measures without relying on external cloud services.

Minimal infrastructure requirements

Ease of implementation

KCSiE highlights the importance of having effective filtering and monitoring software in place to monitor and filter online activity. By monitoring the data flowing through your enterprise-grade firewall, Fastvue eliminates the need for any additional infrastructure, such as apps or agents on end-user devices, simplifying both management and implementation. This simplicity ensures that schools can implement monitoring solutions quickly and without technical barriers, reducing the risk of non-compliance due to delays and complexity in implementation.

Bring your own device (BYOD) policy support

KCSiE requires that schools implement tools to protect students on all devices accessing the school network. Fastvue's ability to integrate seamlessly without the need for device-specific apps or agents means it can monitor user activity across all devices, including those brought in under BYOD policies. As more schools across the UK adopt BYOD models, Fastvue acts as a vital tool for ensuring safeguarding extends to all users and devices on the network.

Zero impact on performance

KCSiE emphasises the importance of practical and sustainable network monitoring systems that don't disrupt the learning environment. Fastvue's agentless design ensures that safeguarding measures are implemented without impacting the end-user performance of student or staff devices. This ensures students can focus on their education without interruptions, and IT teams can maintain a safeguarding system that is both effective and unobtrusive. 

Additionally, in schools using agent-based solutions, students often find ways to disable or bypass the agents, creating significant challenges for IT administrators in detecting and addressing these workarounds. By removing the need for agents or apps, Fastvue eliminates this issue, streamlining safeguarding and avoiding unnecessary complications. 

Fully automated system

Once configured, Fastvue is fully automated, eliminating the need for day-to-day manual intervention. Reports and alerts are generated in real-time, enabling immediate responses to potential issues and enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in safeguarding. This aligns with KCSiE's emphasis on proactive monitoring to identify and address risks promptly, ensuring student safety.

Real-time customisable reports and alerts

By allowing staff to tailor reports and alerts to their needs, Fastvue facilitates timely interventions and informed decision-making. This supports KCSiE's requirement for schools to have effective monitoring capabilities that provide actionable insights into potential risks.

Reports can be customised to align with the school's unique requirements, taking into account factors like age demographics, current concerns and school culture.

For example, the concerns for younger students in primary education often centre around accidental exposure to adult material. In contrast, for students in Years 10-12, schools may need to prioritise monitoring for self-harm, cyberbullying and extremist content. 

This flexibility allows schools to focus their safeguarding efforts where they are most needed.

Cost-effective monitoring of your network traffic

Fastvue's cost-effective solution enables schools to deploy comprehensive safeguarding measures within their means, demonstrating a prudent and resourceful approach to KCSiE compliance. Unlike agent-based solutions with per-device pricing and additional cloud storage costs, Fastvue works seamlessly with schools' existing hardware and firewalls, eliminating the need for costly infrastructure upgrades. 

So there you have it, our nine reasons why integrating your Firewall with Fastvue is an efficient and secure approach to safeguarding your school online. 

Book a demo with Fastvue today and discover how our solution can help you achieve your safeguarding goals.