An Introduction to Safeguarding with NetSupport DNA

The Keyword and Phrase Monitoring feature in NetSupport DNA is designed to provide a school with insight into and alerts from, any activity by a student that might suggest the child is engaged in activity that would place them at risk.

A database of pre-supplied keywords and phrases is used covering a range of topics from self harm, bullying and racism through to risks of radicalisation. NetSupport works with organisations including the Internet Watch Foundation to access the latest keyword databases as well as undertakes “in-school” consulting with students across age groups to access the latest trending terms used by young people.

NetSupport DNA then employs advanced neurolinguistics to ensure accurate detection and matches and to avoid unnecessary “false alarms”. Keywords and phrases can have individual severity levels set which control the outcome on matching, from simple recording of the activity, through to triggering an instant alerts or screen capture. In addition to the instant alerts raised for higher severity cases, a simple word cloud is displayed for each category showing instances of all matching low level keywords and phrases over a given period, ensuring schools can monitor trending items that might subsequently warrant intervention.

Ensuring children can report a concern they might have is key to an effective safeguarding policy. The concept for the Report a Concern feature in NetSupport DNA is relatively simple: namely, to provide an option on each school PC where any student can discreetly report a concern that they have to someone that they trust at the school.

Within the remit of safeguarding, concerns raised could be anything from bullying, to abuse at home, emotional stress, or simply being witness to concerning behaviour by another student.

The module allows the school to define as many staff as they decide on the system, students, from any DNA-enabled PC can then select which of those staff they wish to direct their concern to. The member of staff is instantly alerted when a concern is raised and can then track the concern and record any follow up actions directly from within NetSupport DNA. Senior staff and safeguarding leads at the school can be assigned rights to view all concerns raised and will be alerted if any concern is not actioned within a pre-defined period of time.

The key to this feature is to offer simplicity and ease of access for students with the flexibility and safeguards to ensure it is effective for use by schools.

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