On the ALT Members JiscMail list Tim Smale (Keele University) recently asked:
“I’m looking at providing some guidance to staff and students on the use of Google Drive (and other solutions). In particular I’m interested if anyone has guidance on what they consider safe and unsafe to store there. For example, do you allow the storage of student related data (exam results) etc?”
In response Tracey Duffy (Jisc Digital Media) highlighted Jisc Legal’s ‘What are the FOI and DP implications of using services like Dropbox or Evernote?’ guidance from January 2013. Tracey’s colleague at Jisc Digital Media, Virginia Power, followed up with this extensive annotated list of resources which readers might find useful:
- Boston University have a policy that might be useful to you – they have tied it in with Data Protection and Restricted Documents albeit from a US perspective http://www.bu.edu/infosec/policies/google-drive-security/
- Bristol University have this site which covers a lot of information including some Do’s and Don’ts in terms of storage http://www.bristol.ac.uk/it-services/applications/google-apps/drive/
- If you are looking for a useful staff development course/guide around Data Storage and Security I would recommend a particular section of MANTRA from EDINA which could form an integral part of the policy http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/storageandsecurity/
- Page 14 of University of Portsmouth’s guidance is quite definite about what you can and can’t store on Google Drive http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/services/universitysecretary/recordsmanagement/factsheets/filetodownload,178819,en.pdf
- Finally Durham University has a good page on issues to consider https://www.dur.ac.uk/cis/security/dropboxcloud/
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