Frequently Asked Questions

Online safety refers to the act of staying safe online. It is also commonly known as internet safety, e-safety and cyber safety. It encompasses all technological devices which have access to the internet from PCs and laptops to smartphones and tablets. Being safe online means individuals are protecting themselves and others from online harms and risks which may jeopardise their personal information, lead to unsafe communications or even effect their mental health and wellbeing.

The internet is now an integral part of our lives. Online safety, also known as e-safety or internet safety, is extremely important in making sure both adults and children feel safe, secure and confident when accessing and engaging with content online.

National Online Safety are a multi-award winning provider of online safety e-learning and resources for the whole schools community.

National Online Safety support schools across the world to keep children safe online through our engaging and award-winning online safety training and classroom resources, designed for the whole school community.

All of our online safety courses are CPD certified and delivered through a high-quality video format, accessible through our state-of-the art Learning Hub.

All of our courses fall in line with the latest statutory guidance issued by the Department for Education. This includes ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE)’, ‘Teaching Online Safety in Schools’, ‘Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education’ and the ‘Education for a Connected World’ framework.

Yes. All of our courses have been designed to fall in line with the Ofsted ‘Education Inspection Framework’, the ‘Ofsted School Inspection Handbook’ and ‘Inspecting Safeguarding in Early Years, Education and Skills Settings’ guidance.

National Online Safety provide a complete a solution for schools to implement an effective approach to online safety. Our certified schools programme will help schools to meet their statutory online safety requirements, ensure staff, parents and pupils feel confident in tackling online safety issues and support the whole school community with staying up to date with the latest online safety news and trends.

The National Online Safety offer a Certified Schools Membership, which provides a complete solution for schools to implement an effective approach to online safety.

Our certified schools membership includes access to all of our CPD certified courses, our library of webinars, resources and lesson plans for teachers and parent guides on the latest apps, games and online dangers. Schools will also receive our monthly online safety updates which include the latest news and developments in social media, apps and games to ensure they are keeping on top of the latest evolving online issues.

Our #WakeUpWednesday campaign is viewed as one of the most trusted and reputable learning resources in the UK, providing expert advice on the latest platforms and online risks that parents and carers need to know about through a beautifully engaging and content rich design. We release a brand new guide every Wednesday.

All of our guides are written by industry professionals and subject matter experts who have extensive experience in their field.

Each week we share our latest guide on our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. All of our previous guides can be found on our website and can be downloaded in either a JPEG or PDF format

Our courses include: - Online Safety Course for School Staff and Governors - Online Safety Courses for Designated Safeguarding Leads and Deputies (DSLs) - Online Safety Course for Professionals working with children with SEND and who are vulnerable learners - Online Safety Course for Parents and Carers - Online Reputation Course for Schools and School Staff

All of our courses can be accessed from our state-of-the art dedicated learning hub.

National online safety provide a range of lesson resources in online safety for pupils of all age ranges. This includes: - Interactive video lesson resources for primary years, including early years foundation stage (EYFS), Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. - Online safety lesson resources for primary years, including early years foundation stage (EYFS), Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. - Online safety lesson resources for secondary years, including Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

Based on the eight key topics outlined in the UKCCIS ‘Education for a Connected World’ framework, our new Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 interactive video lessons talk to the children about online dangers in a fun and engaging way, providing a truly immersive experience.

Data that is retained ensures functionality of the service such as Progress tracking (which and how much of a Webinar has been viewed for instance). These are all tied back to a User record, where we store the Users Name, Email address, Role within organisation and some other profile information such as key interests and subjects.

If a request to remove User data is received, users and their associated progress tracking information can be fully removed from the system, but that information would then be irrecoverable.

As the system operates over a web interface & browser, any of your Users could print the pages that they are on. Reports can be downloaded at a School and Trust level to be used alongside the Schools other internal Management Information Systems. Data is only downloaded by NEG staff if they are providing assistance to a nominated contact within a School.

Electronic data stored within our platform is stored within Amazon Web Services (AWS) with all the necessary data protection policies both at a network, system & human level implemented. Database storage is encrypted within AWS.

Internally all NEG endpoints are patch managed under our internal IT policies and our software platforms are kept up to date and deployed regularly.

NEG staff are manually onboarded to the platform and are always mandated to have Two Factor Authentication enabled when accessing any of NEG’s online systems. Infrastructure and data engineer access is hardware multi factor protected. Penetration tests are carried out regularly on the platform, and all developers working on the platform have long standing industry experience of working on data-critical systems. All actions within the system are audited and we have robust request monitoring to ensure that the system is not nefariously targeted.

All traffic to and from the platform is encrypted using industry standard Secure Socket Layers (SSL).

Point in time database restoration is available on a 14-day rolling window with full snapshot backups occurring daily. Database is replicated with failover instances available in other availability regions. Content is backed up across provider. Application is hosted across multiple availability zones, with auto healing infrastructure architecture.

Hierarchically, data about a School and its users is contained within that schools record. This is handled at an application logic level. The only exception to this is Trusts (School Groups) where certain users with the requisite permissions can act as a manager of schools within their group for the purpose of reporting but this is controlled by strict ACLs.

Platform data is stored in the London region of Amazon Web Services.

No data that is only accessible once logged in, can be downloaded by any robots.

Other than fields such as Name, email and job title/role, there are very few other ‘input’ fields that your staff can fill in, as the system is mostly delivering content.

All personally identifiable data about a user is stored in one database table and all related items are data are attached from that part of the database (such as progress tracking entries). All records for a unique data subject can be provided upon request.

The platform is hosted on auto scaling infrastructure which handles significant spikes in normal traffic usage patterns. Other information pertaining to our defences are in place but commercially sensitive.

School users identify with an email address & password or via Single Sign On with Microsoft 365 or Google. NEG Staff are authenticated with email address, password and two factor authentication.

All content changes have to be conducted via NEG staff who are authenticated with two factor and all code change deployments are peer reviewed by the development team before entering production.

We have robust hosting monitoring in place and have automated unit tests covering the codebase that are ran prior to any deployments.

Nothing is required to be installed on school infrastructure, other than a relatively modern browser. NEG do have an iOS and Android app available, however these are not required to use the system. They have been fully checked by both the Apple and Google development teams and programmatically talk to the main platform over an API.

Bandwidth usage of browsing the platform will be no different to browsing normal internet sites. Bandwidth usage when viewing a Webinar or Course videos will entirely depend on the quality rate that is chosen by the user.

One.

Different logs are retained for different length of time; Infrastructure logs are retained for minimum of 30 days. Application audit logs are retained indefinitely.

Via the Hub area.

Yes, we analyse which content is accessed across our platform to ensure we continue to curate and deliver relevant, useful content for our users.