danIT Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 We recently tried Securus, i have to say i loved it but what a price!!!!!! really exspensive! Does anyone have any experience of any alternative programs, perhaps open source. I know of a number of open source programs which can perform parts of what securus can do but not combined? Any ideas? id love to develop and open source version of this software.
StewartKnight Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 depending on who you go to, you can get securus cheaper. Some of the companies charge more for the per-station licence, some for the Securus server
danIT Posted July 5, 2006 Author Posted July 5, 2006 can anyone recommend a supplier? The quote we had for our network was £4000 per year for first 3 years then £1500 after that.
Pear Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 I don't like Securus myself. It gives too many fake reports, It picked up a Star Wars site as racist because the term jar jar was used. Then it constantly comes up with "lik" as sms because year 7s can't find the E key. Sure I can increase the security level but the best thing it has come up with so far is some year 9 lad typing "dildo" in google. I didn't think it was worth bothering the pastoral officer. Securus put in an box running there server which I felt was pointless as it could have been stored on the DC. Despite not being the best programmer in the world I don't think its actually that hard to actually program yourself. All you have to do is scan the RAM for certain combinations of characters.
webman Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Keylogger, wait for 'bad' word, pick up running application name, take screenshot, get username, log to database?
sahmeepee Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 webman: I think securus goes a bit further than a keylogger because it reads any text written to the screen (unless it's written as a graphic obviously) so it'll pick up window titles and the text of dialog boxes etc. I spoke to a NM from my neck of the woods today who'd trialled it and he gave me almost exactly the same report as Pear. The "lik" thing it didn't like at all. His install of it was totally swamped with false positives.
NetworkGeezer Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Does Securus allow per classroom teacher control like NetOp/Support?
meastaugh1 Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 No, the client just watches for bad words to appear on the screen, then take a snapshot, which then gets uploaded to the securus server.
NetworkGeezer Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Thanks for that and welcome to EduGeek. Any blocking of bad content either? If not then you'd have to buy another product as well as Securus.
meastaugh1 Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Thank you. Hmm, not sure. Don't think so. What type of bad content? I use Symantec Web Security here for web content filtering, purely because the license is paid for by the LEA.
danIT Posted July 6, 2006 Author Posted July 6, 2006 Our internet is already filtered, provided by LEA, you can alter the dictionary of badwords to remove perhaps the word jar jar as a racist word? aswel as adding bad words to the dictionary. if anyone can give me any pointers for writing a program similar to this, being a neewbie to programming, then please let me know!
OutToLunch Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 CyberSentinel. I'm not a fan of it myself - prefer to stick to blocking IM apps and monitoring logs with Censornet - but apparently it's working very well at one of our other sites... They're only using it in a small IT room (15 or so PCs) so I don't know how the costs would mount up for a larger establishment but maybe worth looking into. On a side note, I'd be very interested to hear what open source programs you've come across that can do some of what Securus does...
securussoftware Posted March 23, 2007 Posted March 23, 2007 Thanks for that and welcome to EduGeek. Any blocking of bad content either? If not then you'd have to buy another product as well as Securus. Web filtering will be offered by Securus from June 2007.
securussoftware Posted March 23, 2007 Posted March 23, 2007 Thanks for that and welcome to EduGeek. Any blocking of bad content either? If not then you'd have to buy another product as well as Securus. Web filtering will be offered by Securus from June 2007.
webman Posted March 23, 2007 Posted March 23, 2007 Yeah, their boxes are riveted shut as well so it's not as if you can piggyback the harddrive and do some constructive research on it...
philjones2000 Posted March 23, 2007 Posted March 23, 2007 We put a securus box on the system just before Christmas and this combined with a crack down on the results from SLT has completely changed the students use of langauge and behaviour the network. When we first stuck it on we were quite shocked by the amount of dodgy behaviour and language they were using, but we publised that we were putting in the system in assemblies. We came down hard on a couple of kids caught out in the first week and word spread like wildfire about "the box" and how it was watching everything you do all the time. Now we have hardly any hits on the box at all. The odd swear word in an email but nothig worse than that. The kids seem to regard it as a total "big brother" thing and that if they even think about doing bad things it will suddenly appear and take them away. This way say something more about the psychology of our kids though There were a number of false postives at the start but changing the filter words soon fixed that (arsenal's website coming up over and over). I do agree that it is too expensive. I had to go to the govenors to get special funding for this but it wasn't that difficult given the current media climate of fear over the net and grooming etc. We paid around £4000 for the initial fee for a seconadary school of 800ish. Overall, I love having it, it's really cut down on the amount of "surveilance" work me and my technician do- but mainly it's a great "safety net" providing accountabliity to the system should the worst happen. Sorry for the long post!
benIT Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 We use an In House solution that looks for "iffy words" then takes print screen - saved on a server under the users username / data / time /pc on. It then tells the user they are performing no allowed actions so be warned. This captures everything you need, does everything the rip of companies ones do. We may look at offering this solution at a small charge to recoup our time investment made - perhaps to get a few extra PCs - Any takers, can provide more info if required
webman Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 Hi Ben, we'd be very interested in the details on your solution please.
ICTNUT Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 @benIT : We are currently trialing the securus system which does what you say yours does. I would be very intrested in seeing what yours can do, please can you provide some more info for me, PM me. [edit] Just read page 1 of this thread and I would agree with alot of the posts about the false positives yeah sure it catches the few and we did make an example of them but most are just pickingup words that are mis-spelled of have a letter missing. Don't know if I have the time to sit through the daily barrage of reported violations to only find a handfull that are correct. [/edit]
securussoftware Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 @benIT : We are currently trialing the securus system which does what you say yours does. I would be very intrested in seeing what yours can do, please can you provide some more info for me, PM me. [edit] Just read page 1 of this thread and I would agree with alot of the posts about the false positives yeah sure it catches the few and we did make an example of them but most are just pickingup words that are mis-spelled of have a letter missing. Don't know if I have the time to sit through the daily barrage of reported violations to only find a handfull that are correct. [/edit] WIth any monitoring software, its all about training and tailoring the product to your needs. There are tips and tricks for spending less than 10 minutes a day to catch the inappropriate behaviour. If anyone wants any more info please let me know.
Espada Posted May 16, 2007 Posted May 16, 2007 Despite not being the best programmer in the world I don't think its actually that hard to actually program yourself. All you have to do is scan the RAM for certain combinations of characters. Wow, is that all, we've had self harming, proxy avoidance, bullying, and more Yours sounds trivial in comparison.
bandgeekmafia78 Posted June 18, 2007 Posted June 18, 2007 How the hell is "Jar Jar" a racist word?! I don't think you'd be kicked out of Big Brother for saying that one!
mrforgetful Posted June 18, 2007 Posted June 18, 2007 I saw a demo of Policy Central by Forensic Software and that looked pretty good. Not got it like. http://www.forensicsoftware.co.uk
kearton Posted June 18, 2007 Posted June 18, 2007 We've had Securus for about a year now. I just configure our Securus to EXCLUDE words like LIK...
mrforgetful Posted June 19, 2007 Posted June 19, 2007 With the Forensic stuff you can assign people to be emailed. This means you can assign levels to the offences and have say a level 2 Year 8 offence go to Head of Year but a Level 4 go to someone else etc..
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