Keeping Children Safe In Education - a look to the future

Nicky Peachment, IWF Commercial Relationship Manager

In May the government published guidance for teaching professionals on what schools and colleges should do, and must do, in order to keep children safe. Today that guidance comes into force. Help and advice can be found on the UK Safer Internet Centre website where professionals can also get free up-to-date guidance on filtering and monitoring.

These guidelines will be of interest to a lot of IWF Members, many of whom offer security and safety services to schools and colleges.

There’s a clear requirement for filtering schools’ internet connections using the IWF URL List. This safeguards everyone from accidentally stumbling across webpages we’ve identified as containing images and videos of children being sexually abused.

But what’s the future?

The future is already here. The IWF Image Hash List is the next generation safety solution which will stop the upload, sharing and storage of child sexual abuse images – not just filter them.

It’s just been named “finalist” in the Cloud Hosting Awards for Product of the Year and Innovation of the Year. For the internet industry it will revolutionise their security and safety offering to their customers. There’s a place for both the URL list and Image Hash List.

Dell SonicWALL, our Members, are soon bringing out a short film and white paper about this guidance – I’m proud to have been filmed for it. They make an excellent point when they say “The guidance places fresh expectations upon those responsible for safeguarding…with no additional financial support from Government...”

There is no additional charge for the Image Hash List – all our services are included when a company comes into membership with IWF. 

I’d like to see the next iteration of the guidance explicitly recommend the use of this next-generation service which literally hunts the images down so they can be deleted at source. Of course, there is nothing to stop companies offering this now – it’s definitely worth schools and colleges asking if their provider uses it, or plans to, in the next few months.

Find out about the IWF Image Hash List here. Already a Member? Speak to me or the team about upgrading your security and safety features for your customers here.