Security News > 2020 > October > Report: UK colleges face testing times with ageing kit, iffy connectivity, and some IT staff supporting 1k+ users

The infrastructure reviews - published by Jisc today - took place between 2016 and 2020 and covered 118 institutions, including 59 Further Education colleges.

The research went on to note that most colleges found managing the upgrade cycle of both end user kit and infrastructure "Very difficult".

Robin Ghurbhurun, Jisc's managing director of further education and skills, commented: "The government's announcement on 19 August that it had released £200m for 180 colleges to spend on physical and digital infrastructure is welcome, but is it not enough to solve the underlying digital challenges caused by years of under-investment."

While this may have been annoying in the old, on-premises world, Jisc noted that most colleges had shifted services such as email and calendaring into the cloud, where decent connectivity is a must.

Mobile Device Management came in for criticism and while the majority of colleges were able to keep Microsoft's code patched and up to date, third-party software management was "Often not as rigorously enforced".

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/10/26/jisc_research/