KxStudent
KxStudent is a tool for managing your student's accommodation experience all year round. Including applications, allocations, contracts, charges, payments, inductions, arrivals and departures. Directly interfaced with your student record, finance and access control systems. Runs seamlessly with KxConferencing to manage your whole portfolio in one place.
Features
- Isolated cloud subscription for cyber resilience
- UK data centres with geo-redundant backup and recovery
- Data anonymisation and archiving for data protection compliance
- Managed service for upgrades and patches
- Integration with other university systems
- Advanced data security by user across properties, teams and role
- Real-time reporting
Benefits
- Provide management with oversight and control
- Enables management of multiple sites across one portfolio
- Manage rates and occupancy providing visibility across the user base
- Quickly see availability of all resources per location
- One-stop-shop for students to manage their stay
- Integrated eco-system for payments with full reconciliation process
- Mass student allocation option for speed and accuracy
- Manage your nominated partners
- Brilliant student experience from arrival to departure
- Customisable websites to outshine your competitors
Pricing
£24,579 a licence a year
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 13
Service ID
2 9 8 4 4 4 1 1 1 7 6 6 3 4 8
Contact
Kinetic Solutions Ltd
Stacey Wright
Telephone: 01908067000
Email: stacey.wright@kineticsoftware.com
Service scope
- Software add-on or extension
- No
- Cloud deployment model
- Public cloud
- Service constraints
- Planned maintenance and upgrages are agreed with each customer on an as needed basis via the help desk. Customer must agree to the Microsoft Customer Agreement for terms and conditions that relate to the Microsoft Azure infrastructure.
- System requirements
- VPN will be required for integration with on premise software
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
-
Monday to Friday 8.00 am to 6.00 pm excluding bank holidays with a 4 hour initial response.
Additional chargeable service for 8.00 am to 10.00 pm including 8.00 am to 6.00 pm at weekends. - User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- Yes
- Online ticketing support accessibility
- None or don’t know
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- Web chat
- Web chat support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web chat support is accessible
- Users can access a chat bot and leave their comments there for a support operative to get back to them.
- Web chat accessibility testing
- None.
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
-
The support service covers:
(1) support in the use of KxStudent via the help desk and our application specialists
(2) upgrades and patches to KxStudent including the work to update the software
(3) technical support of the environment including backups, recovery plans, architecture, sizing and ongoing maintenance
Our service includes access to our Cloud Operations team and technical support personnel.
The costs are built into the licencing provided. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
- We provide a full onboarding service, including business analysis, configuration (to speed up deployment), customisation, training and user documentation.
- Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
Option (1) we agree a new contract and leave the service in place
Option (2) we move your data to another service, such as AWS, on-premise or a data-centre
Option (3) you extract your data using the tools provided
Option (4) we extract your data in an agreed format (charged) - End-of-contract process
- Services to move your data or provide extraction services are charged per our rate card.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Supported browsers
-
- Internet Explorer 11
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Opera
- Application to install
- Yes
- Compatible operating systems
- Windows
- Designed for use on mobile devices
- Yes
- Differences between the mobile and desktop service
- Student facing websites are designed to work on PC, tablet and mobile. Staff facing services have limited mobile friendly features
- Service interface
- Yes
- User support accessibility
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- Description of service interface
- KxStudent is a server based executable accessed from a file share on the application server, there is no local install.
- Accessibility standards
- None or don’t know
- Description of accessibility
- Users can only access the system from a Windows based PC and not a tablet or Apple device.
- Accessibility testing
- None.
- API
- No
- Customisation available
- No
Scaling
- Independence of resources
- Subscriptions are deployed into unique instances with network segregation.
Analytics
- Service usage metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
- Active and inactive users each month, aimed at cleaning and removing inactive user accounts.
- Reporting types
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
-
- United Kingdom
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- Other locations
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Penetration testing approach
- Another external penetration testing organisation
- Protecting data at rest
- Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
Data importing and exporting
- Data export approach
- Users run reports to screen and then export the data to Excel. Excel connections (embedded in Excel) connect to the database to provide full access to datasets.
- Data export formats
-
- CSV
- Other
- Other data export formats
- XLXS
- Data import formats
- CSV
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
- SLAs for service availability mirror the SLA provided by Microsoft for uptime of their infrastructure. Compute infrastructure using single instance architecture and premium storage has a 99.9% SLA.
- Approach to resilience
- We use Microsoft Azure data centres which are inherently resilient. Our minimum standard is to deploy single instance VMs with automatic failover in the data centre, with automated daily backups of each VM in full to a second geo-redundant data centre.
- Outage reporting
- An internally accessed dashboard/API and email alert.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication needed
- Yes
- User authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
- Security is applied at the database level to restrict access to data on a need to know basis. Access to the application requires a login which is linked to the database level role. Access to the technical infrastructure is restricted to our Cloud Operations team. Access to our support channels is for named domains.
- Access restriction testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Management access authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Username or password
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- User-defined
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- British Assessment Bureau
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 16/07/2021
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- -
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
- PGI
- PCI DSS accreditation date
- 08/06/2021
- What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
- -
- Cyber essentials
- No
- Cyber essentials plus
- Yes
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Information security policies and processes
- Our Information Management Security Forum is headed by our Chief Transformation Officer and includes representatives from each main department within the business. The ISMF meets monthly to review risk, audit reports, and non-compliance statements. It reviews our business management system at least annually and assesses external and internal influences.
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- Our configuration and change management policy sets out the processes we follow. Access to cloud infrastructure services and related access permissions is restricted to specific roles. Our Cloud Operations team is responsible for configuration and change management - general support staff do not have access. The application layer and related upgrades is managed by our support team who take responsbilitiy for application changes. Updated versions of applications are tested for vulnerabilities before general release.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
We use vulnerability testing software to test application vulnerabilities prior to release to customers. If vulnerabilities are found in a current release then these are fixed and issued in a new release, which becomes the new current release.
We run Crowdstrike on all servers to provide 3rd party input into security vulnerabilities. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
- We use software vulnerability testing to indentify potenial compromises in our applications. These are fixed prior to release. New potential compromises when identified are fixed and issued in new releases. We have a formal incident response policy and process which treats each incident as it is reported on its own merits - for example assessing whether the incident is a single customer incident or relevant to many customers. We assess critial incidents within 2 hours.
- Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
- We have a pre-defined process for incidents which are reported via our help desk. Incidents which relate to Confidentiality, Integrity or Availability of service are escalated; availability issues to our 3rd line team, confidentiality and integrity issues immediately to our compliance team via a specific incident reporting template. The incident compliance team has a template that determines the reporting process.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Public sector networks
- Connection to public sector networks
- No
Social Value
- Fighting climate change
-
Fighting climate change
Our Climate Commitment - we recognise that climate change poses a threat to the economy, nature and society-at-large, our company commits to take action immediately in order to:
Halve our greenhouse gas emissions before 2030
Achieve net zero emissions before 2050
Disclose our progress on a yearly basis
In doing so, we are proud to be recognised by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, and join governments, businesses, cities, regions, and universities around the world that share the same mission. - Equal opportunity
-
Equal opportunity
Kinetic is committed to equality of opportunity in employment, with the aims of ensuring that all employees and job applicants are treated fairly and equally and supporting the Company’s objective of providing a working environment that is free from all forms of discrimination.
Our aim is that our workforce will be truly representative of all sections of society and each employee feels respected and able to give of their best.
We oppose all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination or victimisation. To that end the purpose of this policy is to provide equality and fairness for all in our employment.
All employees, whether part-time, full-time or temporary, will be treated fairly and with respect. Selection for employment, promotion, training or any other benefit will be on the basis of aptitude and ability. All employees will be helped and encouraged to develop their full potential and the talents and resources of the workforce will be fully utilised to maximise the efficiency of the organisation.
Our staff will not discriminate directly or indirectly, or harass customers or clients because of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, political affiliation or belief, sex, and sexual orientation in the provision of the Company’s goods and services.
The policy applies to all staff within the Company, including employees and other workers, such as agency workers, temporary workers and contractors. All staff are expected to put this policy into practice. - Wellbeing
-
Wellbeing
We provide MHFA training for all senior management and team leads.
Pricing
- Price
- £24,579 a licence a year
- Discount for educational organisations
- No
- Free trial available
- No