Is anyone using SmoothWall Monitor?

[WGA_Ben]

Hi

 

We have had a demo and sales pitch for SmoothWall Monitor and our DSL is very keen, the main selling points for us being the reduction in false positives and 24/7/365 human moderation.

 

It's not cheap though, so was wondering if anyone is already using it and what are their views? Would you recommend?

[CHiLL]

We're using that and have been since it was previously Visigo. While it isn't cheap, we find it an excellent tool to manage safeguarding. While other tools like Impero, etc can capture stuff, it requires too much work for someone to sit and filter through all the captures, due to the amount of false positives. Monitor is much better, as you say, it's graded by a human. We also did once have a council provided service that did the same thing, human grading of captures, but their consistency for grading them was terrible. Monitor is at least consistent. Also, if you have a super serious capture, like self harm, they'll call and to warn you straight away, so you can act on it.

 

We also have it deployed on student laptops that they take home. This has caught some particularly high level captures that we'd have otherwise missed.

[foofighterjim]

I can only really echo what @CHiLL has already said. Once you factor in the amount of money it costs in terns of hours worked for school staff to go through all the false positives, Monitor actually saves money / time and provides a more efficient turnaround to issues.

[ibpalle]

This feedback is basically what we overwhelmingly get from our Monitor customers. Integration and management of the alerts as well as the human moderation is a big timesaver for our customers.

[BlueScreen]

We have monitor, and have had to remind the safeguarding team to click on the link in the alert email to get the actual time that the flag was raised.

 

The email alert contains the time that the human moderator picked up the alert and not the time that the activity happened. Low priority alerts may not be moderated for several hours.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi

 

We have had a demo and sales pitch for SmoothWall Monitor and our DSL is very keen, the main selling points for us being the reduction in false positives and 24/7/365 human moderation.

 

It's not cheap though, so was wondering if anyone is already using it and what are their views? Would you recommend?

 

Lightspeed offer an alternative that is very cost effective in my view - happy to arrange a demo/quote if you're interested in casting the net wider..

[gwendes]

On 10/11/2021 at 14:59, Wave9_Lee said:

 

Lightspeed offer an alternative that is very cost effective in my view - happy to arrange a demo/quote if you're interested in casting the net wider..

£3 per user per year? Compared to how much for Smoothwall?

[SchoolsBroadband]

We had a look at many products in the market and despite our filtering being Netsweeper we decided to partner with Smoothwall because of the managed monitoring. 

 

Yes its a bit more but it saves time and therefore money overall as well as being consistent in our opinion.

 

Dave

[pete]

We use it (and Visigo before that).  Previously we used eSafe (awful software, Smoothwall bought them out, kept the people and quietly buried the software in the woods).

 

Alerts are actionable if they hit an DSL mailbox (either in the digest or individual alerts, and occasionally we'll get a phone call if it's serious enough). 

 

It integrates with MyConcern (dunno about CPOMs/others - poke @tom_newton) to generate alerts if you want that.

 

The dashboard has enough context around the search that I rarely have to add further context for behaviour incidents (OK, occasionally I have to explain niche Internet subcultures).

 

Compare that to other products with a high rate of false positives, the reduced faffing (and freeing up staff for other things) offsets the price (in our opinion).

[tom_newton]

Yes, CPOMS, and our own recordmanager.

 

[SPM99]

Would you mind sharing a rough cost of Monitor?

[tom_newton]

Drop me an email with your details and I will get you a rough cost - [email protected]