Central filtering console?

[TheHyperTechie]

Hi all,

 

Probably been asked and answered many times on here before...

 

What ISPs with filtering include a central management platform for all of your schools? 

 

We have 16 schools, and the needs (in terms of filtering) are the same, so policies could essentially be cloned, or we could simply use a single policy to cover all of them. Is this something that the popular ISPs offer? We will likely be looking at an SD-WAN in this instance. 

 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

[Oaktech]

We use Smoothwall - a smoothwall appliance as a child node in each school and then a parent appliance at the Trust HQ Policies are made on the parent and pushed to the child devices. Reporting Smoothwall Cloud portal. Means that we are ISP agnostic and in control of every aspect of our filtering.

[TheHyperTechie]

24 minutes ago, Oaktech said:

We use Smoothwall - a smoothwall appliance as a child node in each school and then a parent appliance at the Trust HQ Policies are made on the parent and pushed to the child devices. Reporting Smoothwall Cloud portal. Means that we are ISP agnostic and in control of every aspect of our filtering.

Thanks, that sounds exactly like what we would be after.

 

@tom_newton are you able to chime in with some of the offerings? it would be greatly appreciated.

[tom_newton]

Absolutely we can help with this - in fact you can now set your policies in the cloud and have them feed down to each device (wether that's an appliance, or on-device agent).

 

We have a wide variety of ISP partners from the large nationwide organisations, through to smaller regional ISPs who can do a "one stop shop" for you.

 

Drop me an email ([email protected]) and I can find who might be right for you to work with

[sigma]

That would be possible for any ISP offering Netsweeper.  As we are a single school, I can't confirm that they do though.

[rogerdnixon]

We use Securly across 34 sites now and 31 schools. This has one console and we can clone policies and easily onboard a new school. Works fine across a range of devices.

[speakercon]

+1 for Securly, it can do this excellently and you won't need to alter your WAN/firewall arrangements if you don't want to.

[tom_newton]

FYI with Smoothwall cloud you can also do agent only, just like our good friends at securly

[Wave9_Lee]

On 02/04/2025 at 08:53, HyperTech said:

Hi all,

 

Probably been asked and answered many times on here before...

 

What ISPs with filtering include a central management platform for all of your schools? 

 

We have 16 schools, and the needs (in terms of filtering) are the same, so policies could essentially be cloned, or we could simply use a single policy to cover all of them. Is this something that the popular ISPs offer? We will likely be looking at an SD-WAN in this instance. 

 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

 

Hi, we can do this with Sophos Central.  Manage multiple sites though a single dashboard, this works for firewall rules as well as filtering, and also includes CIXA (endpoint AV).  All Sophos products basically.  You can have one click to push  out new rules/polices and also apply local specific rules.   SDWAN is included and it's an Enterprise Class Next Gen firewall. 

 

Our view is that going this route gives you much more flexibility on the WAN side but also total control down to local level, including visibility of managed/unmanaged devices/users.  We offer a co-managed service, where we make all and any changes, but you can also make your own changes.  Happy to provide indicative pricing within 24 hours.

 

Cheers Lee

[SchoolsBroadband]

On 02/04/2025 at 08:53, HyperTech said:

Hi all,

 

Probably been asked and answered many times on here before...

 

What ISPs with filtering include a central management platform for all of your schools? 

 

We have 16 schools, and the needs (in terms of filtering) are the same, so policies could essentially be cloned, or we could simply use a single policy to cover all of them. Is this something that the popular ISPs offer? We will likely be looking at an SD-WAN in this instance. 

 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

 

Hello, this is something we deliver to many MATs including some of the largest in the country, certainly to many of your size.

 

We are an ISP with our own network (not a layer 3 re-seller over someone else's) giving us ultimately flexibility.

 

We terminate connectivity from all the major carriers and a growing number of alnets into a single virtualised hosted FortiGate (security) and Netsweeper (filtering) interface. This by default can create a private WAN across all of your schools that enables you to do exactly what you require. One of the big advantages of Netsweeper is its hierarchical nature. You can push policies down to other schools quite easily. You can even delegate some control to schools to block or allow schools themselves if you wish, or you can easily centrally control everything yourself. Our service can also be co-managed or fully managed by our team of engineers. Reporting is also included via our own hub platform which integrates with our CRM giving you real-time safeguarding alerts.

 

We also offer SD-WAN solutions using onsite FortiGates which again can integrate with our hosted Netsweeper solution too giving you the same interface as per our virtualised hosted FortiGate when used in conjunction with FortiManager.

 

Finally we also now have a partnership with Smoothwall and have been delivering their services to some of our customers also with a similar outcome to your requirements.

 

We deliver our service to over 3,000 schools in England and are also on many of the major frameworks to aid with your route to market.

 

We'd be happy to give you a demo of either solution depending on your requirements.

 

Cheers

Dave

 

 

Edited April 3, 2025 by SchoolsBroadband

[Adam_Exa]

On 02/04/2025 at 08:53, HyperTech said:

Hi all,

 

Probably been asked and answered many times on here before...

 

What ISPs with filtering include a central management platform for all of your schools? 

 

We have 16 schools, and the needs (in terms of filtering) are the same, so policies could essentially be cloned, or we could simply use a single policy to cover all of them. Is this something that the popular ISPs offer? We will likely be looking at an SD-WAN in this instance. 

 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

 

Hi,

I am confident this is a solution Exa can fulfil; we cover all the major providers. Over the last 20 years, our in-house team have developed our filtering solution "Surfprotect Quantum", which has a centralised management system, as you mentioned is required.

We also have our own dedicated Tender support/MAT team who specialise in custom built SD-WAN solutions for multisite projects.

 

We would be happy to arrange a demo to showcase our filtering solution in real time, and you can decide for yourself if our filtering could be a good fit.

 

If you would like more information, please get in touch. 

 

Thanks 

 

Adam Bogue 
Business Development Manager
Exa Networks 

 

E- [email protected]
T - 01274026424
M - 07445317049
W - www.exa-networks.co.uk  

Edited April 4, 2025 by Adam_Exa