Securly Vs Lightspeed - What do you have and what are your thoughts?

[Jaan]

Hi all,

 

Just after some feedback with regards to the above. We have Sophos XGS with web filter along with ContentKeeper that also filters/monitoring.

 

Sophos doesn't do a great monitoring product.... which is a real shame, its a big hole in their product lineup, i've made them aware they are going to lose education customers to competitors products...... We're getting a lot of pressure to find a better monitoring solution. CK just isn't great for us.

 

We're looking at Lightspeed and securely, We are a Google school so lots of Chromebooks and windows PCs.

 

Just after some insight from people using these products and what you think?

 

Cheers

[gszech]

Securly is good when it works. We are using all Aware, Filter and classroom platforms.

We had some problems with it, recently email checking stopped working, previously staff could not login to the system for a few days.

There are neverending problems with YouTube filtering and the workaround provided by Securly is just sad: https://securly.status.io/ - Open your network’s DNS settings and add a CNAME...

We also had problems with the Think Twice feature where if this was on you could not type emails on Chromebooks, typing in Gmail would just lag. This was a year ago but I'm afraid to turn on this feature again.

 

Apart from that this is a set and forget type of product especially if you are a Google School using Chromebooks.

I've never used Lightspeed but we had Smoothwall before and Securly is just way better.

[rogerdnixon]

We use Securly across our Trust (29 schools). Google Workspace throughout and a mix of mainly ChromeOS, but some Windows, ipads and a handful of Macs. Spinning up new schools is quick and easy and by and large you just set it up and I don't look at it on a typical day. Guardian app is good if you are 1:1. We have had a few issues with the extension recently and they are changing how they are hosting it. However, that seems to be resolved now.

 

I've had a demo of Lightspeed which does offer a very similar feature set. Seems quite a bit more complex to manage and setup - but does appear to have some nice features. But not used it in production - so cannot really comment more than that.

[Noxid_w]

Currently using Securly and we will be moving away from them. We've had so many issues in the last 12 months. Youtube not working at all in September. Then everywhere thinking our geolocation was USA. Today, slow webpage loading (I assume it's their DNS resolving slowly) and random captcha tests appearing throughout the school. We have an issue as well currently where students could connect to BYOD Wifi, and it wouldn't prompt them to signin in, so they would appear as anonymous in the logs. The fix is to enable "force login", so I did. That just stops a lot of students from even being able to use BYOD. Currently have a ticket open for that. But SSO broke for Adobe Creative Cloud because of turning that on, so I've had to turn it back off.

 

It's become a saying here "what's wrong? Oh, it's probably securly". I don't recommend them. They had a stand at BETT this year, I went over there to discuss some things, no one was there no matter what time I went to the stand. I have no account manager to talk to. I only ever speak to the same engineer (Eric is his name) whilst he is very knowledgeable, I get the impression he's the only support in the country. I'm just a very unhappy customer, and will be moving away when our contract expires.

[Jaan]

Anybody using lightspeed care to comment?

 

thanks all

[gszech]

Currently using Securly and we will be moving away from them. We've had so many issues in the last 12 months. Youtube not working at all in September. Then everywhere thinking our geolocation was USA. Today, slow webpage loading (I assume it's their DNS resolving slowly) and random captcha tests appearing throughout the school. We have an issue as well currently where students could connect to BYOD Wifi, and it wouldn't prompt them to signin in, so they would appear as anonymous in the logs. The fix is to enable "force login", so I did. That just stops a lot of students from even being able to use BYOD. Currently have a ticket open for that. But SSO broke for Adobe Creative Cloud because of turning that on, so I've had to turn it back off.

 

It's become a saying here "what's wrong? Oh, it's probably securly". I don't recommend them. They had a stand at BETT this year, I went over there to discuss some things, no one was there no matter what time I went to the stand. I have no account manager to talk to. I only ever speak to the same engineer (Eric is his name) whilst he is very knowledgeable, I get the impression he's the only support in the country. I'm just a very unhappy customer, and will be moving away when our contract expires.

LOL our approach is the same. If something doesn't work we first disable Securly on a test computer to see if it's causing the problem.

Saying that the product worked fine for us in the last few years, just the last few months are not great.

[Jaan]

LOL our approach is the same. If something doesn't work we first disable Securly on a test computer to see if it's causing the problem.

Saying that the product worked fine for us in the last few years, just the last few months are not great.

 

 

It "looks" really good a polished

[MancTech]

We've just had Lightspeed installed and so far so good.

 

Client install for Windows, extension for Chromebooks and something called Smartshield which catches everything else by becoming your DNS forwarder. Reporting is good and support is excellent.

[altecsole]

We've recently moved to Securly, and I really like it. The YouTube issue wasn't great, but that's probably more the fault of Google, rather than Securly. We do enforce sign-in. We deploy the Securly extension to Chrome and Edge, with authentication against Azure. We are a Microsoft 365 school, so have Edge set to Auto sign-in, this just works, and filtering is seamless. For users who choose to use Chrome, they do get a Securly sign-in page, where the sign-in using their Microsoft account. We are a state boarding school, so we do have boarding students who connect on to our BYOD network. They are required to install the Securly certificate, but there is a Securly page for that, which makes the process simple. They do have to sign-in on first browse, but no more often than they would have to sign in to Microsoft. We have an out of school hours policy that frees things up a bit, so allow Streaming Media, etc. Any laptops that we give out to students are configured the same, so they get the same level of filtering at home.

 

Any support request I've made have been promptly dealt with, so I've no complaints with that. Our Adobe Creative Cloud does work, although the sign in is via Azure.

 

I note that our local Council (Cumbria) are now offering Securly as their web filter option in their IT services bundle - previously they offered Lightspeed. It may be a cost decision, but it will mean a decent cost saving for us when our current Securly contract is up for renewal.

[adamsund]

+1 for Securly. Use it across a few schools with very few issues. Where we have had issues, they've been very good at helping us. At one school we moved away from Lightspeed as we were having a lot of issues with the client, the fact that you need the client, and that you need (or least used to) an on-site appliance for BYOD.

[speakercon]

Another +1 for Securly, we use the browser extension for all managed devices and it works fine. I've not logged many support requests but I've found the ones I have resolved quickly. YouTube has always been a pain I've seen multiple other venders struggle to control it, but the browser extensions are currently not effected only smartpac & DNS. I've seen the captcha thing pop up occasionally but nothing to cause a nuisance.

 

We only use filter so can't comment on the other modules.

[midweek]

Securly here too for several years. Since we switched to the browser extension for Edge it has mostly been smooth (including Youtube). Support is fine when we've used it (the aforementioned Eric is very helpful).

Safeguarding stuff has been well received by our pastoral team.

Overall I much prefer it to the Smoothwall filtering it replaced.

[jnfarmer]

Have used Lightspeed at my previous school, I quite liked it actually. Worked well once it was set up correctly (that's the bit that takes some time).

 

We have Securly where I am now, and we are looking at moving away from it to Smoothwall.

[Wave9_Lee]

Think the replies to this show that there is no silver bullet, a lot of product switching going on. Ref Sophos, it's not a monitoring product in this context, it provides advanced security and WAN/routing features as well as web filtering. DFE/KCSIE guidelines make reference to filtering and monitoring separately, which I think, is correct. My personal preference would be to split the monitoring and filtering function to two different products - this way any gaps, faults etc won't be replicated across your estate and you'll get more resilient/low risk coverage. Wave 9 offer Sophos and Lightspeed to cover all filtering and monitoring requirements - we have reasons why we prefer these to other products, but of course won't suit every customer scenario or preference. Happy to discuss pros and cons of these and other solutions any time.

 

There are some great developments on the Sophos roadmap which I can share in the NewYear.

 

As I've said several times on here, I think that many/most products across all functions (not limited to filtering/safeguarding) 'do a job' and usually represent ok value - the key thing for me is the organisation you deal with, how easy to work with they are, what the level of support they offer you. This makes a big difference and can usually help bridge many functionality gaps.

Edited December 10, 2024 by Wave9_Lee

[tom_newton]

If you want a monitoring product that plays well with other filters, come talk to us at Smoothwall. Most other products menstioed are "filter bolt ons" and will force you to change everything

[Max_Power]

+1 for Lightspeed

 

We have been using the filter, alert and classroom management products for over 12 months now. Big improvement on our previous filtering and alerting product.

 

Filtering product works well, and the reporting is good while being simplistic to use. Support when needed has always been very good, and they're always quick to respond.

Alerting product works well after some tweaking to get the right level to suit your needs, and the integration with 365 so it scans composed emails or file contents as well as the usual internet traffic is very good. We partner that with the Human Review offering.

Classroom Management, staff like it as its not got lots of bloated functionality - staff want to be able to see what students are doing, lock screens and push out the occasional URL so it fits the requirements fine. Uses OneRoster to sync classes.

[Noxid_w]

Another +1 for Securly, we use the browser extension for all managed devices and it works fine. I've not logged many support requests but I've found the ones I have resolved quickly. YouTube has always been a pain I've seen multiple other venders struggle to control it, but the browser extensions are currently not effected only smartpac & DNS. I've seen the captcha thing pop up occasionally but nothing to cause a nuisance.

 

We only use filter so can't comment on the other modules.

 

If you use the extension though, what would stop someone embedding a YouTube video into a PowerPoint and watching it unfiltered?

[speakercon]

If you use the extension though, what would stop someone embedding a YouTube video into a PowerPoint and watching it unfiltered?

Anything not picked up from the browser extension drops onto the default policy via DNS.

[TheRobins]

Used Securly for 3 years before moving to a Netsweeper solution in the summer. Didnt leave on bad terms it was a more strategic choice with a MAT future requirements. The 3 Years I had Securly really did rate it, it was fit and forget and performance was usually very good. I did like their Youtube management, really could lock it down as you needed. I have noticed the issues lately which hopefully they will solve. I looked at Lightspeed before going down the netsweeper route, it seemed overly complicated and didnt quite fit the bill for us on the demo.

[yjohnson]

We've just had Lightspeed installed and so far so good.

 

Client install for Windows, extension for Chromebooks and something called Smartshield which catches everything else by becoming your DNS forwarder. Reporting is good and support is excellent.

 

We're in the process of setting up Lightspeed Filter. Do you use BYOD and if so how did you set this up? Are you using authentication to identify who is connected?