Smoothwall replacement

[gumbygaz]

Our Smoothwall is up for renewal end of November, are people still recommending them or are there better/cheaper options out there? Searching the forum Sophos XG (Or is that just a firewall) and Lightspeed

We've got RM Broadband & Unify, so could very easily implement the RM Safetynet which from the bumpf looks like its improved a lot, but no hardware firewall on site so assuming that would leave me requesting changes.

 

Smoothwall is ticking along ok on the whole, never really had much issue with the Smoothwall system. The GUI is a touch basic these days, and he reporting section is pointless. Would like something that had better reporting system.

 

Any thoughts appreciated!

 

Gaz

[Primus]

We're pretty happy with our Smoothwall though like others I think their support right now isn't great and I'm hoping it's going to improve.

 

How is reporting pointless? We find it absolutely vital.

[gumbygaz]

We're pretty happy with our Smoothwall though like others I think their support right now isn't great and I'm hoping it's going to improve.

 

How is reporting pointless? We find it absolutely vital.

 

Pointless in the regards very clunky/slow and difficult to get the information I need, even then it's incomplete. The safeguarding report comes through daily, and on the whole that's fine, a lot of false positives but I don't mind that.

Main reports I find much quicker for me to use Netsupport DNA and pull the information off there.

[Primus]

I think the whole GUI of Smoothwall needs a serious revamp and yes the reports aren't very user friendly - were it not for the daily emailed and instant emailed we'd waste a lot of time clicking through reports where each invidual hit needs to be expanded invidually. So not pointless but in need of improvement definitely.

[PlantHead]

We moved over to fortigate from smoothwall.

Bit more expensive but a lot better as far as we are concerned.

[Simcfc73]

I moved to Sophos, haven't made my mind up if its better yet.

[DGardiner]

We moved over to fortigate from smoothwall.

Bit more expensive but a lot better as far as we are concerned.

 

really? we have them in a couple of our schools and ive never seen anything so confusing/convoluted in my life

[synaesthesia]

Having set up smoothie from scratch, using Lightspeed and then going to Sophos XG, the latter is by far and away the runaway leader IMO. Reporting still grinds my gears a bit but it's far less confusing than Smoothwall and the less said about Lightspeed the better. It's very Apple-like; simple enough to like but too simple to really achieve what you need.

[ibpalle]

Disclaimer: Obvious bias is obvious!

 

Take a look at the new cloud offerings as well as classroom manager from Smoothwall. Getting a bundle deal is advantageous and we do have some improvements in the reporting area coming up in the near future - cloud reporting specifically will be a lot faster and simpler. It may pay to stay with Smoothwall with these added services. In addition, get your account manager at Smoothwall to sign you up for a reporting webinar. A 1 hour session going through reporting features beyond safeguarding may help a lot as well.

[caffrey]

To me, they are all as bad as each other. We are obligated to provide duty of care so we have little choice.

 

I would avoid cloud, from personal experience if there is a problem with the setup you will end up relying on the companies support at least on site you can attempt to fix it yourself.

[free780]

I miss Bloxx. The support was brilliant. I guess with Smoothwall there's a lot of orgs using it.

[steve_forbes]

Our Smoothwall is up for renewal end of November, are people still recommending them or are there better/cheaper options out there? Searching the forum Sophos XG (Or is that just a firewall) and Lightspeed

We've got RM Broadband & Unify, so could very easily implement the RM Safetynet which from the bumpf looks like its improved a lot, but no hardware firewall on site so assuming that would leave me requesting changes.

 

Smoothwall is ticking along ok on the whole, never really had much issue with the Smoothwall system. The GUI is a touch basic these days, and he reporting section is pointless. Would like something that had better reporting system.

 

Any thoughts appreciated!

 

Gaz

 

Hi,

 

Steve Forbes (RM) here, self-service firewall is currently in development for RM Broadband customers so you won't need to request changes - you will be able to make changes yourself using the same portal as RM SafetyNet. As you are an existing RM Broadband and RM Unify customer it might be worth just trying it out to see if it meets your needs - it won't cost you anything extra and could save a fair bit of money on replacing hardware. I won't get into the whole cloud vs local thing, ultimately it needs to be what is best for your school.

 

Thanks

Steve

[Wave9_Lee]

Having set up smoothie from scratch, using Lightspeed and then going to Sophos XG, the latter is by far and away the runaway leader IMO. Reporting still grinds my gears a bit but it's far less confusing than Smoothwall and the less said about Lightspeed the better. It's very Apple-like; simple enough to like but too simple to really achieve what you need.

+1 for Sophos (obviously!)

 

Reporting is much improved with some tweaks, and there are some improvements coming in the next updates.

[rogerdnixon]

We use Securly in some of our Trust schools and it works great. Have some unique safeguarding tools and is very easy to use and setup.

[Securly_Marc]

Hi Gaz,

 

If you're looking in to cloud solutions - take a look at Securly.

 

We have a huge focus on safeguarding, so our reporting is one of the most critical parts of our solution - you can also add 24/7 human moderation to only get reports/alerts on the critical safeguarding alerts, whilst the other reports are structured and can be accessed easily.

 

Install, support etc... all free of charge + your parents get free filtering at home too!

 

Give me a shout if you'd like to have a look.

 

Cheers,

 

Marc

[SexeysIT]

I recommend you take a look at Opendium https://www.opendium.com/

A great product with outstanding technical knowledge of filtering issues facing education and boarding schools. Good support, highly customizable

The web search word cloud report is easy to understand and drill down into and the DSL has access to the daily safeguarding report