Internet Filtering and Management

[Zoom7000]

We're looking to upgrade our in house Internet Content Filtering and Management System. At the moment we use Igear for MS Proxy 2.0. Both of which are out of date and no longer supported. Both of which were on the system before I started.

In theory Igear for MS Proxy is still supported and we renew licences every year. However, their content filtering seems to be totally useless. It is updated everyday, yet it seems like no sites are actually being added to the library. It was brought out by Symantec a few years ago and hardly anyone at Symantec knows what it is.

Igear has since been replaced by Symantec Web Security, which requires ISA Sever. This is 1 option that we have, is to upgrade to SWS and ISA Server, but I'd rather not to because Symantec support is just plain crap.

2nd option is to look elsewhere. We currently use Igear, for 2 purposes, In house Internet Filtering and also Controlling User Access to the Internet. No user (or machine) can access the Internet until we have added them (and granted access) into Igear. (Users are granted access after they have signed the School Internet AUP) Igear is our in house proxy and all machines go through Igear as their proxy and Igear goes out through the ISP's proxy. It is possible to go directly through the ISP's proxy and bypass Igear altogether. Although the students don't know and can't do that anyway. Igear allows us to put temporary bans on students if we need to and also allows us to create custom filter dictionaries that we have full control over.

So basically we need an in house filter system that can also give us the user management we need. Anyone know of any alternatives?

[plexer]

Smoothwall Schoolguardian or Corporate Guardian.

Ben

[GrumbleDook]

Seconded

[Zoom7000]

Seconded

Seconded? I've never heard of that one... Only Kidding!

I just wanted to say something a teacher would say! :dark1:

So, does it fully allow you customise what you want to activate etc? E.g. I don't want the anti-virus part. Does it allow me to deactivate the anti-virus and never bug me to turn it on again?

[plexer]

Yup.

You can figure various levels of filtering both on url and content for different groups too.

Ben

[GrumbleDook]

And if using AD / NTLM then the Windows Security Groups can easily be tagged to particular smoothwall groups allowing for more central control.

I had a preview of the next version whilst at InfoSec a few weeks ago and it is looking very nice ....

In fact ... I want it now but Tom won't let us have it yet ... something about being patient!

[eduabncs]

One see's GrumbleDook's version of being patient as being...... :axe:

:mrgreen:

[dave.81]

Just trialing Schoolguardian here after using Censornet for the past 18 months. Am convinced that it's the best for our school just trying to convince the bursar that it is worth the money.

[apoth0r]

Impero does a good job if you're on a LA broadband (EMBC for example), let's you filter out anymore sites that you no longer require or want