Would you recommend securus?

[dany2010]

If you have used Securus before would you recommend it?

 

My last school had AB Tutor and Impero. Impero was a improvement over AB but not as much as I though it would be for the price.

 

It created good logs but never really gave you any useful alerts.

 

I've seen Securus has screen readers and porn detectors etc.

 

I'm thinking of combining AB Tutor with Securus.

 

What do you think?

[FN-GM]

Annoyingly Securus refuse to let me or themselves install security patches on the server!!!

[DrPerceptron]

Impero is more of a replacement for AB Tutor - has some handy features that nothing else seem to offer too (MIMIC scripts etc).

 

Securus is a brilliant bit of kit, however, from my experience - only go ahead with it if you find someone (or some people) whose responsibility it is to actually check what's being recorded and act on it. It needs to be monitored. We had it for about 4 years and after about 8 months the guy who went through it left and nobody else wanted to deal with it and we couldn't get anyone to push it on people... so it sat there for 3 years just recording what happened and never being checked.

[mb2k01]

Agree with DrPerceptron on both points, apart from the rating of Securus itself. I found it flaky and to have a slowing effect on my old network (though to be fair, it was a few years ago when I tested, so they may have moved things on)

 

I currently use Impero for classroom management (have used AB Tutor and Net Support School previously) and Policy Central as a direct alternative to Securus.

[Love_Sausage]

To echo the above, Securus requires a lot of attention for it to be worthwhile, it provides a forensic level of detail but only if you're willing to put the time in. Impero has been the more usable option for us.

[dany2010]

Sorry havnt got back to you quicker.

 

Will have a look at policy central when I can get on a proper internet connection. Moving home and only have my phone and 250mb data.

 

I'll have the time to monitor so that's no probs. I didnt find impero that great when compared to an tutor with the only extra feature I used was the history logging.

[russdev]

Often the thing that comes up most when people discuss securus vrs Impero is the lists. So thought I would add that if in support you can get e-safety keywords lists you can import direct into Impero. Edited August 17, 2014 by russdev

[SteveM555]

Often the thing that comes up most is lists in securus vrs Impero so thought I would add that if in support you can get e-safety keywords lists you can import into Impero.

 

Where would we get those? By contacting Impero, or are they on the site somewhere?

 

As for Securus, same as everyone else says it requires a lot of attention - We had it for years before Impero. We also experienced "pushy" sales talk when told them they were not renewing, even tried to go over the NM and contact other staff.

[russdev]

Where would we get those? By contacting Impero, or are they on the site somewhere?

 

As for Securus, same as everyone else says it requires a lot of attention - We had it for years before Impero. We also experienced "pushy" sales talk when told them they were not renewing, even tried to go over the NM and contact other staff.

 

 

If you call support or dm me details I will get them sent over..

[robjduk]

Had securus for years and sadly we are in the same boat where I doubt anyone checks it enough. If there is a problem with a student they check however I feel it is an early warning.

 

So yes its easy to maintain and support is quite good (bar the lack of rack mounted server which pi**es me off) but yeah its fine for student monitoring.

[Abaddon]

It *is* available as a rack mount server - we replaced ours last year with a VM though, as it was more convenient for us to do that...

 

We've had Securus for donkeys years here, and to be fair it does require a lot of time to check the logs, but why get one if that's NOT what you're prepared to do? Seems a bit pointless to get a monitoring box, and then not actually spend time checking it? It can be configured, over time, to be more specific about it's reports, so it does get better.

[JJonas]

We had a Securus server for a trial period. Three weeks in it detected a child protection incident which we were able to prevent as a result. That one incident sold Securus to the School Leadership Team.

 

As for the work involved in analysing the logs look at the keyboard logs first, if its in there they typed it.

Edited August 18, 2014 by JJonas

[RichCowell]

If you have used Securus before would you recommend it?

 

My last school had AB Tutor and Impero. Impero was a improvement over AB but not as much as I though it would be for the price.

 

It created good logs but never really gave you any useful alerts.

 

I've seen Securus has screen readers and porn detectors etc.

 

I'm thinking of combining AB Tutor with Securus.

 

What do you think?

 

We trialled the three big e-Safety solutions a few years ago, but went with Impero - not because it was the cheapest at the time, but because it was also far cheaper than all the separate options that it also covered, so we saved a fortune... I know the prices have rocketed since, which is a shame... but I wouldn't lose it now...

 

I love the reports/details you can get, the email alerts set to go to whoever you want - ours are broken down into upper school and lower school, going to their various SLT members for each... we use it just as much from a network management point of view too, remote support / installations, ICT Teachers reset student passwords via their console, but I'd definitely recommend it as an e-safety solution...

 

Happy to discuss further if you want to ask any questions :-)

[robjduk]

It *is* available as a rack mount server - we replaced ours last year with a VM though, as it was more convenient for us to do that...

 

We've had Securus for donkeys years here, and to be fair it does require a lot of time to check the logs, but why get one if that's NOT what you're prepared to do? Seems a bit pointless to get a monitoring box, and then not actually spend time checking it? It can be configured, over time, to be more specific about it's reports, so it does get better.

 

I know it is available as a rack mounted server which is why it angers me every time I look at that stupid desktop box they gave me. I also know of the VM option but although I praised their support overall, I am certain any issue with the system would then become "an issue with the hardware".