Worried About the Data Security in your Nursery?
Are you worried about the data security in your nursery?
Data security and compliance is an important part of any early years business, and ensuring the safety of personal information is vital to your nursery operations. Data security can be a complex and intimidating part of running a business, and it is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the industry jargon and new policies regarding security and compliance.
We know that as a nursery manager it is crucial to learn how to hold and process information about staff, parents, and children safely and avoid accidental data loss or criminal activity.
Did you know that the education and childcare sector is the second worst offender for workplace data breaches?
We recently ran a survey in collaboration with nursery insurance provider dot2dot – and we gained some valuable insight into how the sector feels about data security, and their experiences with it in their own settings.
Childcare is in high demand, and coupling this with the current staffing crisis, it means that nursery managers and practitioners simply don’t have the time or resources to focus on data. It is crucial for those working in the childcare sector to have a consistent approach to data, allowing for more streamlined processes and negating the risk of data breaches and other accidents.
When a nursery is using a paper-based system, it can take hours out of your day and also opens up the nursery to human error. There could easily be gaps in a child’s record or information incorrectly recorded, and all of this can jeopardise your operations and cause a headache for staff and parents alike.
The Importance of Data Security
It is vital for early years settings to keep good records of accidents on site, for insurance purposes and to meet Ofsted requirements. Children who have been in a nursery’s care can make safeguarding or injury claims up to the age of 18 and three months, meaning data must be kept in order to respond to and defend such an action.
Reviewing risk assessments should not be an annual tick-box exercise – some such documents should be revised more regularly and previous versions kept to demonstrate this progress. However 29.9% of owners and managers currently work to a yearly time frame for updates, highlighting potential for better practice. Another 26.3% do this every six months.
To ensure that your nursery is secure from a data breach, it is important to stay in the loop and up to date with policies regarding data and compliance within the early years sector.
An Integrated System
To ensure the safety and security of the data in your early years business, the best decision is to switch to an online cloud-based system that will hold records securely and save you time on admin. Connect Childcare provides a secure and integrated software package for managers, practitioners and parents.
Connect Childcare links everything from grants, billing and registers; to observations, assessments and daily diaries and even sends selected information through to parents. Without the need for any duplication.
If you update a child’s booking pattern, the registers and bills will automatically update to reflect the changes. The child will automatically appear in the list of children available for observations that day, along with their next steps and any important notes and reminders.
Do you duplicate observations to give to the parents, or show to Ofsted? With iConnect the observations that you record can be sent to the parents, shown as evidence for Ofsted, and kept for assessments and planning.
Eliminating duplication reduces mistakes, increases security and saves valuable time that you can instead spend with the children in your nursery setting.
Connect Childcare’s Commitment to Data Security
Here at Connect Childcare, we’re proud of our robust security posture. This is demonstrated by the fact that we are the only nursery management software provider on the market to hold the ISO 27001:2013 accreditation.
We are also registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, complying with strict Data Protection legislation. We keep all data safe using industry standard security protocols and data storage facilities based in the UK. These storage facilities are all certified to ISO27001 standards for your peace of mind.
Free Report: Cyber Security and the UK Early Years Sector
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Imogen is our Content and Social Media creative
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