SmoothWall Monitor (ex Future Digital / Policy Central)

[smarties11]

Hi All,

 

I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the SmoothWall Monitor product, which they acquired from Future Digital last year (used to be Policy Central before that I think).

 

We currently use Securus but have been offered discount on our SmoothWall filter if we take both.

 

We've seen the demo and it looks quite basic against Securus (that isn't necessarily a bad thing - Securus is over complex for our safeguarding staff) but seems to tick most boxes. If you are using it I'd love to hear your real world feedback.

 

Thanks!

[pete]

We're running a test currently (about ~19 days in) and comparing it to eSafe. We (DSL/IT/Finance) prefer it for a couple of reasons:

 

1. Alerts have context (you can see what was happening before and after the event) so it's easier to discount false positives or examine accompanying behaviour there and then (DSL and IT)
   
2. Alerts are less idiotic (current incumbent reports Google auto-complete searching as "the person definitely typed this") (DSL and IT)
   
3. The client is stable and uses less resources. (IT)
   
4. Pricing is significantly better (IT and Finance) (note that we use Smoothwall too - YPricingMV)
   

 

we do need to go through and compare alerts from eSafe and alerts from SW monitor at the end of the trial to check that things aren't being missed (by either product).

 

 

We trialed Securus a few years ago and found that there was too much faffing to get it from the default config into a usable state for a paid product (signal-to-noise ratio). That and the (at that time) reliance on a version of Java that wasn't receiving security patches were deal-breakers

Edited May 20, 2019 by pete

[pete]

SW Monitor would benefit from a better "advanced sex ed" word list. We had a Y7 kid searching for rather advanced bedroom techniques that would require a trip to B&Q before you can get started. The SW proxy reported it as a problem in safeguarding logs, but it wasn't mentioned in SW monitor, even as a low-level event. Given how common the terms* are, I'm surprised it wasn't flagged up.

 

(yes, the client is installed, functional and talking to the dashboard on the PC in question - I checked)

 

 

*building dangerously sustainable molehills

[ibpalle]

SW Monitor would benefit from a better "advanced sex ed" word list. We had a Y7 kid searching for rather advanced bedroom techniques that would require a trip to B&Q before you can get started. The SW proxy reported it as a problem in safeguarding logs, but it wasn't mentioned in SW monitor, even as a low-level event. Given how common the terms* are, I'm surprised it wasn't flagged up. (yes, the client is installed, functional and talking to the dashboard on the PC in question - I checked)

 

Was it the search itself that popped up in the safeguarding alert or was it the content of the search results?

[pete]

An attempted bing search triggered the safeguarding alert in Smoothwall.

 

The results were (predictably) blocked.

 

I suspect (given the search engine) they were using MS Edge.

[ibpalle]

Hm, sounds like you said, the search didn't trigger monitor - the search results might have. Guardian picked up on the search though so that's good. Monitor does seem to need more when picking up searches - I assume we want to have as few false positives as possible. Submit the search o Smoothwall support then we can get the team to have a look.

[pete]

Will do. Ideally (feature request inbound) we'd like it a bit more twitchy for younger kids (where too much knowledge of certain things may indicate a child protection issue) and less twitchy for older kids (who, when misbehaving, are not at all discreet).

[ibpalle]

That's a good idea. I'll put it to the team to see if they can make something of it.

[smarties11]

Thanks @pete for your feedback, it is much appreciated!

[kennysarmy]

Just about to start a 20 day demo of Smoothwall Monitor on up to 50 devices.

 

Any pointers for how to best setup the system greatly appreciated.