There’s little doubt that ICT has brought great benefits to education, but for those who have to manage ICT in schools it has also brought headaches. It’s bad enough that ICT equipment is a prime target for thieves, but using computers,
especially with the explosion in internet use in the last ten years or so, can also potentially expose both the hardware itself and those who use it to all manner of dangers. With this in mind, here’s a checklist that all schools should have ticked off if you’re to have peace of mind:
1) Securing The Premises.
There are many ways to deter thieves from physically taking computer equipment from schools. None of them are totally foolproof, of course; if a thief is absolutely determined to clean your school out, he’ll get around whatever security measures you have. However, the majority of thieves are basically lazy by nature – if they weren’t, they’d go out and earn a living the hard way, like the rest of us do. And this means that thieves will favour the easy target over the difficult one any time.
What this really means for schools is finding a way to convince potential thieves to choose some other target over you because you’re going to be too much hard work for them. The first line of defence is to secure the premises, and most
sensible schools nowadays have taken suitable measures, whether these be alarms, CCTV cameras or other systems. But what if this doesn’t deter the intruder? The lure of many thousands of pounds worth of computer equipment can still be mighty tempting…