Third Party Assessment of Security for Software in Courses (TPSA)

Our courses and workshops cover a wide range of third-party software, apps, and websites. In order to use some software, course participants may be asked to create an online account.

Not all such software has yet been confirmed as secure for use across all university work.

We assess the security and data privacy risk of their use with the specific scenarios and data in our courses. You will need to undertake your own security and privacy risk assessment before using these tools outside the course context, or with any other data.

If you plan to use the software for your work, we strongly encourage you to follow guidance on third party software and data protection to ensure the security and privacy of systems and data at Oxford.

Find out more

Software (apps, etc) used in our courses

We are currently working on the range of software, apps, etc used in our courses, to assess the risk status of each. The list below will be updated as this progresses.



Software Used

Risk Status

Access

TPSA in place

Adobe Creative Cloud Express

online account required; risk status under review

Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc)     

online account required; risk status under review

Adobe Rush

online account required; risk status under review

Audacity

local usage only; low risk

Blender

local usage only; low risk

EndNote

local usage only; low risk

EndNote Online

online account required; risk status under review

Excel

TPSA in place

GIMP

local usage only; low risk

InkScape

local usage only; low risk

Kubuntu, Linux, some Linux apps

under review

LinkedIn Learning

TPSA in place

MATLAB

under review

MySQL

under review

Nexus365

TPSA in place

NVivo

TPSA in place

Overleaf

online account required; risk status under review

Panopto

TPSA in place

PowerPoint

TPSA in place

Project

local usage only; low risk

PyScripter

local usage only; low risk

Python

local usage only; low risk

R Studio Cloud

online account required; risk status under review

Rapidmooc

under review

Screencast-o-Matic

online account required; risk status under review

SPSS

local usage only; low risk

Stata

TPSA in place

Symplectic Elements

under review

Twitter

online account required; risk status under review

Unity Hub

online account required; risk status under review

university systems

TPSA in place

Word

TPSA in place

Xamp

under review

 

Explanation of the assessment categories




Risk Status

Use in courses

Example

local usage only all software is installed and used locally, there is no online/cloud interaction Audacity: when a user saves an audio file for editing, it stays on the local computer
online account required

course participants are required to set up an account so as to use a website, or
software is installed but you must set up an online account before you can use it

Overleaf, R Studio Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud including Photoshop
TPSA in place a third-party software assessment is already in place Nexus365, Microsoft Office
under review we are reviewing which assessment applies

Contact us:

IT Learning Centre

Use our online contact form
email us at courses@it.ox.ac.uk