Ideas on a possible cloud-based filtering system?

[AlexM]

This is straight off the top of my head so sorry if it's a complete pie-in-the-sky but...

 

At the moment we have around 70 primary schools who currently have fast SDSL links that connect back to our main Council network, go through a Smoothwall appliance and then the traffic goes out to the internet on a 1Gbps link which is shared with Council corporate and NHS traffic. It works quite well but the bandwidth constraints from all the devices plus updates plus cloud-based access and cloud drives means the link can really struggle. We also have centrally managed Cisco WiFi in the schools and this can drop as a result of bandwidth saturation from the school to the Council.

 

My idea is to route all traffic direct to the internet via the service provider rather than via the Council but this would mean Cloud managing the WiFi and filtering and my question is how can this be done effectively, securely and with the ability to centrally manage both the filtering and the WiFi. It also has to be cheap!

 

Any ideas or real-life experiences gratefully received.

 

Many thanks as always.

[Arthur]

Securly?

 

IIRC @rogerdnixon uses this for filtering all of his Chromebooks.

[MkII]

Smoothwall were talking about cloud filtering at the recent edugeek EDIT conference, and the need for mixed filtering... on device, network edge and cloud. Might be worth looking at the conference video when it get released and the published presentation material (although I don't know where that is!! )

[JackCPickup]

Securly?

 

IIRC @rogerdnixon uses this for filtering all of his Chromebooks.

 

This is what we use for schools we move away from council Internet/filtering.

[rogerdnixon]

Yep - we use Securly - works well.

[andynaylorark]

We have over 170+ schools using internet filtering solutions from a company called ESafety 4 Schools.

Works really well for all of our schools.

 

There website is: Home - e Safety 4 Schools

 

They have both NetSweeper (well known) and iBOSS solutions.

Recommend that you speak to them 8-)

 

 

Note:

ESafety4Schools is NOT Ark ICT Solutions.

We are a ICT Service provider for Schools and we use their services and would recommend elsewhere.

CAPITA also use these company for core services.

[Wave9_Stuart]

Hi AlexM,

 

Have you considered Meraki wireless for Cloud Management?

 

Also, we are a reseller of Sophos UTM and are supporting over 100 schools nationwide. We centrally monitor each UTM and connect via a browser to each UTM should a problem arise or a change request is logged.

 

If you would like to have a chat, please call me, my details are below.

 

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[TD]Regards,

 

Stuart Hadley

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[TD]Education Business Consultant

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t: 01785 472 200

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w: www.wave9.co.uk

 

Wave 9 Managed Services Limited

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[Opendium_Steve]

Securly?

 

IIRC @rogerdnixon uses this for filtering all of his Chromebooks.

 

The UK Safer Internet Centre's interpretation of the DfE's "appropriate filtering" guidance specifically says that filtering must be "Network level - filtering should be applied at ‘network level’ ie, not reliant on any software on user devices". That means something that actually sits between your network and the internet - Iceni, Smoothwall, Lightspeed, Safetynet, etc. all fit into that category, Securly does not. So whilst something like Securly may be worthwhile for filtering school owned devices when they are off-site, I think you might struggle to claim compliance with the guidance if that's all you're using.

 

Also, for what its worth, we spotted a fairly major security flaw in Securly earlier this year, we informed them and they took over 3 months to fix it. Under the new GDPR legislation which comes into force next year, a school could certainly be held liable and fined for that kind of breach. (It was the sort of security flaw that leads to peoples' electronic banking login credentials being sent ununcrypted over the internet, so pretty serious).

 

 

In response to the original question:

You could replicate the existing setup, with the filtering system in a datacentre and replace the school<->council lines with VPNs running over the public internet.

[XiJ]

We (the company I work for) developed our own cloud based filtering app. So it's defo possible. Current version aimed at primary schools and we'll be looking for a full roll out imminently. At which point I may be able to become a registered advertiser/ sponsor of EduGeek and actually give details.

 

But it is possible with VM's / data centres / talented web developers and open source software.

[Opendium_Steve]

But it is possible with VM's / data centres / talented web developers and open source software.

 

We don't generally do "cloud based" stuff (I'm not really convinced its a great idea for filtering in most situations), but we've installed a few shared systems for schools which are associated with each other, whereby they have a filtering server hosted at one of the schools and all connect into that,either with line-of-sight links between the schools, or with VPNs (or more usually a combination of the two). Where the geography is right, it can be very cost effective to have a single fast internet connection going to one school and shared with others that connect to each other over relatively cheap microwave links. There's no reason why that kind of set up can't be hosted in the cloud instead of at one of the schools.

Edited July 3, 2017 by elsiegee40

[XiJ]

Indeed. I should stress I'm just around here - and have been for years - as a techy and to share knowledge.

 

With regards to cloud - it's a pretty generic term really. It's on a computer somewhere - whether that's on school, a data centre or even a bedroom

[AlexM]

We don't generally do "cloud based" stuff (I'm not really convinced its a great idea for filtering in most situations), but we've installed a few shared systems for schools which are associated with each other, whereby they have a filtering server hosted at one of the schools and all connect into that,either with line-of-sight links between the schools, or with VPNs (or more usually a combination of the two). Where the geography is right, it can be very cost effective to have a single fast internet connection going to one school and shared with others that connect to each other over relatively cheap microwave links. There's no reason why that kind of set up can't be hosted in the cloud instead of at one of the schools.

 

I did think of this method - line-of-sight connections maybe in each school-cluster but the big problem is geography - both with the terrain and the distances involved. ALso, connectivity to many schools is limited speed-wise - more by the costs involved than the technology!

 

On the use of Meraki - definately something I've been thinking about as far as WiFi and device management go and we already have an exisiting Meraki tenancy and were hoping to move forward to the full Meraki system (we are using the once-free Meraki at the moment which has limitations).

 

Completely agree with the network versus local machine filtering - have used machine-based filtering solutions and have not been overly impressed by them plus I need to know that if the local client crashes or fails for some reason, the user will still be guaranteed filtered browsing. (I think someone may well state something about what I've just typed but I'll answer that as and when!).

 

Really like the idea of hosting the filtering on a Datacentre - VPN to there, filter and manage and then out into the big wide world... (Probably being a tad simplistic there but!)

 

Thank you for all the comments - very interesting what's been said and the thought porcesses this has provoked. As data bandwidth continues to be more heavlily utilised and swallowed up by the ever expanding amounts of online apps, resources, streaming and CMS, I do feel that using cloud-based management systems has to be the way forward...