What is The Prevent Duty?
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The Prevent duty guidance of the United Kingdom Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 requires schools to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. Local Authorities around the country will be expected to ensure children are safe from terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet in school, including by establishing appropriate levels of filtering.
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The new guidance will also factor into Ofsted Inspections whereby inspectors will assess the school’s approach to keeping pupils safe from the dangers of radicalisation and extremism, and what is done when it is suspected that pupils are vulnerable to these. Lightspeed Systems Web Filter has a number of different tools to ensure schools have the maximum protection against these risks.
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Safeguarding Tools
Lightspeed Systems Web Filter contains billions of URL’s all arranged into education-focused categories. Most categories can be allowed or blocked by admins to ensure schools have granular control over the content students can see. However, there are a number of sealed categories that are permanently blocked when it is determined that they have no educational value and may be potentially harmful to users, these sealed categories
include offensive, illicit and extremism. Blocked and sealed categories can also be set up with our Lockouts feature in which the Web Filter temporarily locks out users who persistently try to visit blocked web sites, disabling their Internet access for a configurable amount of time. Locked out users can be viewed and managed in the Lockouts report and an email can be sent to administrators to notify them that this has occurred.
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Violence.extremism Category
One specific Web Filter category that we have created to assist schools with the new act is the violence.extremism category. This category is populated with a list of web addresses that promote extremism and/or radicalization. This list is provided to Lightspeed Systems from The Home Office in the United Kingdom. The violence.extremism category is updated each time the Home Office supplies us with a list. All information in this list is secure and cannot be accessed. By categorising these sites in a dedicated category and blocking access to them, the Lightspeed Systems Web Filter makes it easy for schools to protect students and prevent radicalisation.
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Reporting
Activity involving attempted access to sites in the violence.extremism category, can be reported on with standard Lightspeed Systems reports. Additionally, schools can create their own custom reports to best fit their needs. All reports can be scheduled and delivered via email.
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As a third measure of protection beyond blocking and reporting, the Lightspeed Systems Web Filter can provide administrators with real-time alerts when students attempt to reach sites within selected blocked categories. Schools can also use the suspicious search query feature of the Lightspeed Systems Web Filter to monitor and report on web searches matching the suspicious key words list.