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Data storage and security

All counselling data is stored within your school network and remains under the control of your school.

Counselling data includes:

  • The student list
  • Each student’s details (e.g. name, communication preferences, notes)
  • All consultation sessions

Together with your IT team you can choose the exact location of the database within your school network. CounselPRO supports storing the database in the following locations within your school network:

  • A shared drive on your school’s Google Drive
  • A shared site on your school’s OneDrive/Sharepoint
  • A shared drive on your school’s Network

CounselPRO uses two independent layers of security to protect counselling data:

  • The first layer of protection is the access controls placed on database folder. This access control enforced by the school’s IT team ensuring that only the specified users have access to the database.
  • The second layer is provided by industry best practice encryption (AES-128-CBC), which is applied to all counselling data and can only be decrypted by a suitably authorized user (see “Who has access to the data?“ section)

Please note, attachments (e.g. PDF’s, images) that are uploaded to the student folder are not encrypted. Access to them is restricted to those users who have access to the database folder.

Counselling data can only be accessed through the CounselPRO application by a user who:

  • Has been granted access to the database by the schools IT team, and
  • Has been granted access to the school’s CounselPRO (i.e. has a valid user account), and
  • Has successfully logged in.

Note: The schools sharing settings will affect which consultation notes a particular user can see.