Web Filtering and Monitoring

[jnfarmer]

Hi all

 

We're reviewing our current web filtering solution (Lightspeed) to ensure it is fit for purpose and the best for our school. I'm familiar with Smoothwall and Netsweeper, and I'm quite interested in looking at Securly.

 

We're an independent boarding school with pupils from Nursery all the way up to Year 13. We've got two sites, although our VLANs stretch across both sites.

All staff and senior school pupils have a school provided laptop, either macOS or Windows so we would need something that can filter managed devices whereever they are in the world, as well as BYO and guest devices.

Flexible scheduling for our filtering policies.

Decent reporting, preferably with the ability to create custom reports and scheduling.

Something like Lightspeed Alert or Smoothwall Monitor is essential.

 

Any recommendations? Would like to hear what people think of Securly and the idea of not having any metal on site for filtering.

 

Thanks

James

Edited September 20, 2023 by jnfarmer

[ibpalle]

No metal is a nice dream but if you have BYOD networks, it may not be feasible. In any case, Smoothwall has a cloud filter extension which can be applied with no metal on-premise.

 

Smoothwall monitor is not a filter as such, it's a monitor (Duh ) that generates alerts and reports for safeguarding breaches but doesn't do any filtering.

It can be combined with the cloud filter extension but again, these are extensions that need to be installed on a managed device, so not much use for BYOD networks.

 

Hope this helps a bit