Smoothwall Monitor usefulness?

[petben]

Hello, does anyone use/recommend Smoothwall Monitor? They push features such as real time monitoring, Human-moderated, notification simplicity. We already have alerting setup internally (so concerning Smoothwall results go to a safeguarding staff) so I am struggling to see what the extra £x000 will bring.

https://smoothwall.com/solutions/monitor?

 

 

Any experience of this?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

If you mean normal Smoothwall alerts that’s only for web browsing

 

Monitor does screen based/typing etc (also will work offsite if you have home laptops etc) - think of it more like securus for comparison rather than filtering

 

Steve

[CHiLL]

We've been using it for a number of years now, even from when it used to be Policy Central (which Smoothwall purchased). Using the client installed on each device, it will monitor the usage and take screenshots of anything classified as inappropriate. That screenshot is then sent back to Smoothwall, where is is assessed by an automated process and graded. It it's graded below a certain level, it's viewable in the portal and not passed onto a human for manual assessment. If it's graded above a certain level, then it's passed onto a human for evaluation. If it's then assessed by the human to be the highest grade, they will call the school to inform the designated people (this is usually for something like self harm, extremism, etc).

 

This really came into it's own for us with at-home devices, especially since the pandemic as where we cannot have Impero on them like we do on-site devices (as Impero is on-site only). However, we have had some instances where captures have been taken and graded incorrectly, which meant they weren't passed onto a human when they should have been. This is relatively uncommon though.

Edited June 10, 2024 by CHiLL

[Net_Man]

Human moderation often takes over a hour and quite often pupils have already left for the day by the time the alert comes through. There is no historical reporting feature, the only way to achieve this would be to make periodic downloads using a .csv file and create your own reports. In the short time we have been using the monitoring solution, support is fairly poor.

 

We will be moving over to another free solution provided by LGFL shortly

[synaesthesia]

Likewise it's used heavily here, and is useful for our DSL who is not particularly IT literate. Digital safeguarding is so much harder now than it used to be and IT can't always be on hand to help decipher what some things mean and context. Monitor as you say is literally human manned who's jobs it is to do exactly that. It's worth it's weight in gold - without it, we would absolutely have to have another member of staff involved. Immediate cost saving right there.

 

For the above post, I can't agree - there is *no* free service anything close, and having someone on site looking at some of these things for context and meaning can often take that amount of time too. You can't have everything instant.

[tom_newton]

Human moderation often takes over a hour and quite often pupils have already left for the day by the time the alert comes through. There is no historical reporting feature, the only way to achieve this would be to make periodic downloads using a .csv file and create your own reports. In the short time we have been using the monitoring solution, support is fairly poor.

 

We will be moving over to another free solution provided by LGFL shortly

 

There is a reporting feature - and it would be a very unusual moderation that took an hour. I will find someone who has access to our response time averages to give more details.

I'd love to set you up a chat with one of our PMs to hear your views - anything we can do to improve the product would be really valuable,

[Net_Man]

Hi Tom,

 

A couple of columns showing the incidents over the last 7 days and 12 months is an overview in my opinion and not reporting. There is no option to select any criteria for a granular report.

I have it in writing that 1 hour moderation is normal. Thanks for the offer but these things have all been raised before.

Smoothwall had the chance to show us that they were better than other products on the market but I am afraid to say that in our case they have failed.

[synaesthesia]

What's your alternative, @Net_Man ?

[Net_Man]

if you are purchasing your internet connection from LGFL, you are now entitled to Senso monitoring for free under your subscription package.

I previously looked at both these options but choose Smoothwall over Senso due to a recommendation from another school primarily to do with the alerting.

I am not saying that Senso is better at this stage as I have not used it properly, but it is free and definitely worth a try at the very least.

[tom_newton]

Hi Tom,

 

A couple of columns showing the incidents over the last 7 days and 12 months is an overview in my opinion and not reporting. There is no option to select any criteria for a granular report.

I have it in writing that 1 hour moderation is normal. Thanks for the offer but these things have all been raised before.

Smoothwall had the chance to show us that they were better than other products on the market but I am afraid to say that in our case they have failed.

 

I have some numbers - this school year (not quite closed!) we're so far hitting 98% of moderations for high priority in less than 30 mins, and 95% of low priority in less than an hour - so I would hope that you would see no high priority (that's the ones that need dealing with ASAP) anywhere near that mark.

[synaesthesia]

But it isn't comparable is it, it's AI vs Human. And we all know how well AI is working at the moment.

[Fazza]

Smoothwall support being a bit 'iffy' at the moment aside, we use it at our Secondary School and Primary Schools and out Safeguarding leads at each Academy love it. They particularly like the repors they can get from it.

 

We wanted to do a test so we contacted Smoothwall and the person we spoke to gave us a specifically worded phrase we could enter on a computer that would trigger the software in to action. Unfortunately the person we had spoken to gave us the wrong pass phrase to use so when we typed it in to a computer at one of our Primary Schools, moments later they got a telephone call from someone at Smoothwall informing them of a major safeguarding issue with one of their students so I can confirm their software definately works!!

[petben]

If the SW monitor is also looking at key strokes I assume we need to deploy some software on-site. Does this affect the way we currently filter our web requests. Our Intune laptops have the cloud plug in deployed and essentially without that the machine is completely unfiltered, does it require that or is it a completely different software?

[Steve21]

If the SW monitor is also looking at key strokes I assume we need to deploy some software on-site. Does this affect the way we currently filter our web requests. Our Intune laptops have the cloud plug in deployed and essentially without that the machine is completely unfiltered, does it require that or is it a completely different software?

 

That's correct, you deployed an MSI and then the same style of UCL etc for serial, but it doesn't clash with Cloud Filter so can use them side by side or with another filter no worries

 

Steve

[Dukey89]

Been using this for 3 years. KCSIE guidence means you should have this or similar software raelly too.

 

Even if it stops one of your pupils self harming or being groomed its paid for itself 100x over.

 

We have had quite a few serious alerts that have come through with this, smoothwall called us a couple of times instantly. Many were just typed into word... which your general smoothwall wouldnt pick up on. Reading impero logs or similar is human based checking which as people have said, can be a full time job. You shouldnt have any issues convincing SLT to pay for this

[mikes]

does it work on off site chromebooks ? we have impero monitoring keywords for on site stuff here, set up so that any concerning words will auto send a screenshot to the appropriate year group progress leaders - it was hard at first teaching them about false positives but otherwise works well. Problem is it is on site only

[Net_Man]

@mikes

 

All our CB are solely used on site but I see no reason why Smoothwall monitoring would not work off site, if anything I would say that this would be one of the selling points

[Primus]

Smoothwall Monitor works both onsite and offsite.

[CHiLL]

does it work on off site chromebooks ? we have impero monitoring keywords for on site stuff here, set up so that any concerning words will auto send a screenshot to the appropriate year group progress leaders - it was hard at first teaching them about false positives but otherwise works well. Problem is it is on site only

Smoothwall Monitor doesn't have any form of on-site server and transmits it's data over the Internet to their servers. Therefore the supported device just need an Internet connection and Monitor will be able to communicate.

[tom_newton]

Thanks folks - yes Monitor works offsite, it also works offline (by caching alerts and sending them as soon as it has internet access)