Ways to Keep School Laptops Safe and Secure

Laptops represent a significant investment for many schools and educational facilities. This is why it makes sense to keep them as secure as possible, not only physically, but also in the cyber environment. Below are some advisory points that help to keep laptops secure in schools, many are obvious, but equally should not be forgotten. They range from ensuring your computers have the latest antivirus software to placing your equipment in a laptop cabinet.

One of the best ways in which to secure your laptops is to utilise visual deterrents such as cable locks. Cable locks are an excellent way to deter petty thieves as they make your computers look secure. However, any determined thief will know that it is possible to rip the computer from the cable lock; this is why for all reaching security there are better options.

One of these options is to utilise a laptop cabinet. A laptop cabinet is the ideal way to securely store your laptops outside of lessons. Often they are highly secure, capable of holding multiple laptops and in many cases will also charge the laptops to ensure that they are ready for the next lesson.

Keeping your antivirus software and firewalls up to date is one of the best ways to keep you laptops safe from online threats and attacks as well as any viruses brought in on external media devices by students. This should be done regularly to ensure your computers are kept as healthy as possible.

Ensuring that staff members, pupils and other employees understand how much of a financial investment the computers actually represent is also worthwhile. Ultimately having everyone aware of the risks of theft and virus threats makes the work of keeping your laptops secure much simpler.

The final way in which it is possible to keep the laptops secure in your school is to utilise some form of asset tracking software. Arguably this is a costly option, but it is a great way to track down your stolen property whilst also acting as an effective deterrent if you make it clearly visible that you have such software installed.

The advice above is by no means a complete list of how to keep your school laptops secure. It has however hoped to show that with a conscientious, dedicated approach to security it should be possible to protect your financial investment.