Pupil BYOD with Deep Packet Inspection - Android Issue

[LRGS]

Hello,

 

Please excuse this post if it's been discussed before.

 

Does anyone have a solution, however expensive or crazy, to enable Android based devices to connect to a deep-packet-inspected RADIUS authenticated Wi-Fi network and still capture the search terms for reporting to the pastoral team?

 

It works just fine for Apple and Windows based devices but not Android as the mobile devices simply show 'Limited Connection' or 'No Connection'. This renders the device mostly useless, although you can browse the internet using Chrome the apps generally do not work and the phone believes it's offline. The security certificate has been installed just for clarification.

 

I can, and have tested, that I can turn off the inspection on www.google.com which will fix the problem of limited connectivity but of course the search term capture is then forfeited. This is a DfE requirement of course.

 

Google's own education support section lists many sites that need to be allowed to pass through without inspection, all of which have been tried but not worked.

 

Any suggestions welcome!

 

Thanks for your time

 

[altecsole]

In my experience, web browser access will work on Android with SSL inspection, but Apps are a different matter. We use Securly as our web filter and BYOD devices use the Securly Guest network that doesn't do any SSL inspection. Categories still work for blocking, but no recording of search terms. It's not ideal, but the alternative is students using VPN services to bypass the filter completely. We'd rather keep them on our network, with some level of filtering.

[LRGS]

Thanks for the response and clarification about web browser access working but not the apps. We also are aware of VPN usage which as you say then negates our filtering.