Content Control

[kamikaze]

For our sins we are using Surfcontrol Web Monitor at the moment sitting on an ISA 2006 server. - I hate Surfcontrol!! I have looked at a couple of other options but the prices are crazy. I would welcome any suggestions for an easy to use & configure Content Control system that interacts with ISA 2006 easily. Have tried 7 liked GFI Web monitor but need to take out a mortgage to be able to purchse it!!

Mike Taylor
Network Engineer
St Leonards School & SFC

[john]

I found when looking around for software for this job, that most are expensive if you want them to live with ISA, in the end I got a Censornet box and that does the job for me. I have also used Websense, again mortgaging the school is needed for that.

[kylewilliamson]

We've ditched ISA and gone with Smoothwall School Guardian.

[ctbjs]

You could take a look at this. We had a demo of it at our last network managers meeting and it looks pretty impressive. Its based around policy central if you have heard of that. You could always ask them for a trial.

They cover 3 main aspects with this

- Network use monitoring that covers your content control,
- Image control which is very good and works based upon pixelation and skin tones plus content,
- finally a USB option for controlling your USBs


Pricing as advised by their sales rep was around £7000 for the first year and £1000 each year thereafter for maintenance and support. These prices may not be wholly accurate but give an idea.

Another aspect of it is that it displays your AUP at logon and by clicking to say OK they are accepting your AUP which is useful. I use a cut down verision of this already using the logon message sceen but this would be better.

It also does recognition of welfare situations such as a student (or member of staff come to think of it) writing suicide notes or visiting suicide related sites, it detects this type of data and instantly flags this as urgent and forwards to the relevant parties to take immediate action and remains flagged until cleared.

They also showed us securus and while it was a good solution, for me it didn't come close to the e-safe education product.

[browsw]

We use Smartfilter, BESS edition, which integrates nicely into ISA.
Very powerful with lots of options and categories. Includes education specific categories and exceptions. Fairly good reporting as well.
We get it for about £700 a year.

More info at:
http://www.securecomputing.com/index.cfm?skey=1209
or PM me.