Smoothwall Carisnbroke

[andydis]

recieved the below today from Smoothwall, Am i reading it correctly or are they removing the "Web proxy" from their products?

 

 

 

 

July 2015

 

 

 

 

 

The Carisbrooke update brings enhancements to our multi-tenant functionality for Managed Service providers, Authentication Negotiation, a Non-SSL Login Page and an upcoming Real-Time Search Query Viewer.

 

 

 

 

 

Deprecation of Web Proxy Module

As of the Carisbrooke release roll-out in late July, the Web Proxy module will no longer be available in our products. The same functionality — namely a caching proxy — is included in, and has been replaced by, the Guardian module.

The Carisbrooke release will not be visible to customers with the Web Proxy module installed. There are two courses of action available to customers currently using the module:

• If a proxy and caching are not required features, simply uninstall the module on the Modules page

• If these features are required, install Guardian from the Modules page. This installation will remove the deprecated Web Proxy module

 

 

 

Multi-Tenancy | Managed Services

A multi-tenant solution for Service Providers, large School Districts and networks where fully devolved management is required across a large customer base.

 

This update to Smoothwall for Managed Service Providers gives tenants/managed service customers the ability to edit their own web filter category groups specific to their location's requirements, as well as allowing them to view the policies applied to them by the Central Administrator. This will allow those tenants, for example, to edit custom 'Allow' and 'Block' category groups for their own site.

 

Changes made on tenants' systems will also be fully visible to the Central Administrator through an audit trail.

If you'd like to know if your organisation needs Smoothwall for Managed Service Providers, please contact your Smoothwall representative.

 

 

Authentication Negotiation | SWG & UTM

While many of our web filter customers are now using Kerberos authentication, some clients and client applications require the use of NTLM instead.

 

 

Where it is necessary to use both Kerberos and NTLM authentication for the same set of clients, our new 'Authentication Negotiation' method automatically identifies which protocol is best to authenticate, meaning one policy will suit all Kerberos or NTLM clients.

 

To use the feature, simply select "Negotiate Kerberos/NTLM" where you would usually select either of the two. Selecting "Negotiate Kerberos/NTLM" as standard, rather than Kerberos or NTLM, should have no detrimental effects.

 

 

Non-SSL Login Page | SWG & UTM

In response to customer demand, we have implemented a HTTP (rather than HTTPS) login page.

 

 

 

The option should remove alerts warning end users about security certificates —and removes the need to roll out a certificate— but it should be noted that this will also transmit unencrypted login information.

 

You can find the option in Web Proxy > Authentication > Manage Policies.

 

 

Categorisation Updates

A web filter is only as strong as the accuracy of its categories. Our in-house Categorisation team work constantly to ensure that our filtering engine remains finely tuned, and our proprietary lists are the most accurate available.

 

 

We add new categories regularly, in order to help our customers create the perfect policies for their environment. Here are our newest categories:

Category Description

Body piercing and Tattoos Sites which promote, sell, advertise or discuss any body modification such as piercing and tattoos.

Business and Corporate Sites for businesses and commercial organisations, where the organisation provides paid for goods or services.

Charity and Non-profit Charitable bodies and not for profit organisations

Museums and Art galleries Sites that promote, exhibit, and/or display works of art or objects of historical and cultural significance.

Remote Access Sites offering Remote Desktop and Remote Administration software tools.

Sex Education Educational sites relating to human sexual activity including reproduction, contraception and safe sex.

Toys and Games Sites discussing/selling childrens toys or board games.

Travel and Transport Services Information or bookings related to transportation such as trains, taxis, or airlines. Includes hauliers.

Vehicles & Motoring Sites which advertise, promote, discuss and offer information on vehicles and automobiles.

 

New Content Modifications

The Categorisation team also create Content Modifications, which add new functionality to Smoothwall. This update sees two additions: Enhanced Comment Removal and Sensitive Issue Removal for Twitter.

 

You can find both of these in your Smoothwall UI under

Guardian > Content Modifications

 

Enhanced Comment Removal expands on our functionality to remove comments from YouTube, in order to prevent exposure to unwanted, potentially offensive user comments. Now you are able to remove comments from any site that uses Disqus or Facebook to authenticate comments, including blog networks such as Gawker.

 

 

 

Sensitive Image Removal for Twitter does exactly what it says. Any images flagged as being potentially offensive/adult content will not be loaded into the desktop browser at all, rather than being hidden behind an opt-in gateway.

 

 

Coming Soon: Real-Time Search Viewer SWG & UTM

In August, we will be rolling out additional functionality to Carisbrooke users. In response to the needs of Education customers, we will be offering the ability to view the keywords searched for by your users in real time, allowing faster intervention for problematic behaviour.

 

 

 

The viewer shows all search terms being requested, the user and search engine involved, and an indication about whether the search was allowed or blocked. The viewer can also be customised to show queries for a particular user or search engine, and distributable reports can be exported. We will also allow the creation of a 'Requires Attention' category. This will highlight search terms which are not specifically blocked, but could require attention based on specific context.

 

 

What else is included in this update?

 

Security updates, patches, and more...

 

6993 Guardian now uses considerably less memory when applying changes to policies

8312 Guardian no longer logs doomed client attempts to access the localhost address

8339 Guardian now validates the shortest possible certificate chain which is faster and more reliable

 

 

 

A reminder about the importance of HTTPS inspection

Last month, Bing, Wikipedia and Reddit all followed Google's lead and made their traffic HTTPS only. This means that if you do not have HTTPS inspection enabled, inappropriate content could reach your users from these sources.

More and more web traffic will switch to HTTPS in the near future, and we strongly recommend that our customers enable full HTTPS filtering in order for their web access to remain safe.

 

 

 

 

Get in touch

 

 

 

 

Not

[AMLinington]

Back in't good old days, Smoothwall and the Web Filter (DansGuardian) were two different products. You could have the Smoothwall Firewall software with a basic 'Web Proxy' functionality, OR you could have the Firewall and Guardian Web Filter. This was back in the old 'Guardian 2' days. The product has moved on since then and now the Smoothwall Modules are defined differently and the 'Web Proxy Module' is a legacy module that serves no purpose as it was superseded by the Guardian Web Filter literally years ago.

 

What this email is telling you is that this old, legacy module is being deprecated and removed from the product. I very much doubt there are any that still use it because it was superseded by Guardian. If you are using the Web Filter with filtering rules and proxy settings it is unlikely that this update will affect your filtering in any way as you will be using the Guardian Web Filter, not the old Proxy module. They are just removing a redundant module.