Batman Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 We had an incident of bullying on facebook this week on our network, and my superiors are wanting to step things up a little with regard to effective internet filtering. The fact of the matter is that the students should not have been on facebook because it was blocked, but they had sidestepped the embc filter by using a proxy. Something I'm sure you're all familiar with... new proxy websites seem to spring up all the time and we can't keep up with blocking them ourselves. My question is this; should we expect embc to catch these sites? Has anyone else encountered and overcome this problem whilst on embc? Are other filtering systems (eg. Smoothwall, Dan's Guardian) more effective at combating the problem? We know for a fact that students are quietly and consistently managing to use the same sites to get onto stuff they're not supposed to; we block the ones we catch but we can't catch them all.
andy_d Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 short answer yes we currently have smoothwall on eval, looking to buy it soon... It rocks! As many other members will tell you Anonymous proxies, and games sites etc, are completely a thing of the past... Give them a call and get an evaluation of it if you want to try it 2
Willott Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 EMBC school - bought Smoothwall a couple of months back, haven't seen any incidents of proxy sites anywhere yet (and I put securus on looking for the word facebook and the only hits were links on sites). I was getting a little annoyed with the EMBC filtering, and the poor reporting and lack of dynamic content filtering, so went and found how good life is with Smoothwall. If you'd like to see it in action, let me know. Cheers 2
finbar3 Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 you might find that Circumventor web sites are being used to get round things, bypass web filters (websense, 8e6, smartfilter, lightspeed, etc.) with tips from Peacefire.org is one of them, even if you block a site ie EduGeek.net sometimes https gets round things and people often forget to block both.
Willott Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 Some of the SSL proxy sites don't have a non-SSL version, so tend to be picked up less quickly by URL based filters - Smoothwall has (I believe the only) SSL MITM filtering, where SSL streams are opened by the smoothwall box, dynamic content filtering is done by the smoothwall box, and then passed to the client -it's a highly useful tool in the blocking of proxy sites! Cheers Will 1
silver_uk Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 Willott - here is the details of the guy that we use for all our smoothwall needs. Its a new product to me, straight forward and effective, I have even managed to beat the kids at flash filtering there games. We use the UTM appliance version. Have funmate Silver_uk details as promised................ Gavin Logan Education Sales Manager SmoothWall Ltd 0113 3874 168 - Direct line [email protected] 1
Edu-IT Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 You should also log your complaint with the EMBC service desk as they'll be able to run a report for your site and see which URLs are getting through. 1
mpe Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 My question is this; should we expect embc to catch these sites? Has anyone else encountered and overcome this problem whilst on embc? We know for a fact that students are quietly and consistently managing to use the same sites to get onto stuff they're not supposed to; we block the ones we catch but we can't catch them all. The obvious question is how to the students find out about them? In the case of mailing lists it isn't exactly rocket science for RBC to sign up to them, etc.
Sylv3r Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 How much does a smoothwall box cost? It all depends on the number of licences / spec of the box or software version your after. Its built up bit by bit to give you the cost. We can probably give you a ball park figure, but probably best speaking to smoothwall direct.
Edu-IT Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 It all depends on the number of licences / spec of the box or software version your after. Its built up bit by bit to give you the cost. We can probably give you a ball park figure, but probably best speaking to smoothwall direct. Can you give us the ballpark?
john Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 As another Smoothwall UTM user, I am VERY happy and pleased with it, so much so I am a case study for Smoothwall. When I started in post the Internet was out of control at our place, since I implemented the Smoothwall solution it became much more under control and its now a teaching and learning tool not a distraction to teaching and learning. I highly recommend that people look at it, it really is worth the money it costs us as its just so darned powerful and every time they do an update it adds brilliant new features, often requested by people like us on here!. I know I am only one of many happy Smoothwall users here on the forums, Ric being another one who has a UTM appliance. As for costs, Gav (who is refered to above) will be more than happy to help, but as Tom Newton posted the other day on a thread elsewhere on here, Smoothwall don't make money on the tin, its not the aim of it, its purely a little 1U appliance perfectly optimised for the Smoothwall product and the job it does as some people such as me just want a box to bolt in, plug in and go rather than building a server, setting it up, ensuring *nix compatibility with components etc, so within 30 minutes I had it rack mounted, connected up, talking to the LAN and people being filtered through it all without any problems or concerns. 1
tom_newton Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 Thanks guys - we love you too We try extremely hard on the anonymiser/proxy front. Certainly with SSL MITM (we are one of a handful of vendors offering this, in truth) i'd expect 99-point-something effectiveness. We will improve though Next target: games. I believe the flash filter has made inroads., It is young yet though - so feedback required! 1
GrumbleDook Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 I'll take a deep breath and respond politely. @Batman - you have a PM EMBC users ... please, please, please do me a favour. Without feedback to your LAs things cannot be improved. If you are having problems with your filtering please let people know ... this is really important to Northants members. As for Smoothwall, yep ... good kit and works very well. I've still got to catch up with Tom and co about good examples of it setup in Northants to still get the most of EMBC stuff (and I was talking with Gav today and that hadn't jogged my memory!) The other thing I would say (and this is really for all RBCs) is that if you are going to make a change from your RBC controlled filters make sure you have sign off from your Head as they are the people legally responsible (and yes ... there will be a fresh wave of paperwork for Northants folk in the coming months on this) and then also make sure you have an audit trail / change control within your school so should something go wrong you have someone backing you up. An example would be to note all machines and users that have 'lower' levels of filtering, get this agreed by the Head (or designated member of SLT), any changes to filters are reviewed at least fortnightly (puts some accountability on you but also means you have someone supporting you when you have blocked a site that someone else wants) and make sure you also go through the filters unless there is something specific you need to access that is blocked. At that point release the restrictions (or use a more relaxed account) and then go back the regular levels. Safeguarding is a big thing for OFSTED at the moment and could be checked in a variety of different way.
tom_newton Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 Tony - see PM. We will catch up soon. May even be worth us coming to see you next week?
maark Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 We are embc and use smoothwall just for banned students to force them on to a restricted list of sites. The only thing putting me off using smoothwall for whole school is supposed reduction in speed by forcing everyone through the smoothwall box rather than direct to embc's proxy servers. This is according to embc but as anyone experience of this? We have 1500 students so could be an issue.
Willott Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 EMBC users ... please, please, please do me a favour. Without feedback to your LAs things cannot be improved. If you are having problems with your filtering please let people know ... Have done that - spoke to the guy in charge of IT Services for schools commenting about the lack of dynamic content filtering, and the response I got was a sort of "it does the job well enough" type response and that it's Becta accredited so it must be good enough filtering. It may be purely something to do with our LA and their relationship with EMBC, but I have no way of telling.
cookie_monster Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 Thanks guys - we love you too We try extremely hard on the anonymiser/proxy front. Certainly with SSL MITM (we are one of a handful of vendors offering this, in truth) i'd expect 99-point-something effectiveness. We will improve though Next target: games. I believe the flash filter has made inroads., It is young yet though - so feedback required! Tom, we recently had an issue with users using TOR portable with Firefox to bypass filtering both Smoothwall and EMBC, I tried it and could get on anything. I've since used software restriction policy to ban all exes which has stopped this. Am I right in thinking that if a student can use a TOR program that initiates an SSL connection from the client that Smoothwall cannot filter as it can't analyse the packets. If this is the case is there a way to ban SSL connections that aren't opened by the Smoothwall? Thanks.
nile_c Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 @cookie_monster What's your current setup? Transparent proxying or nay? Are we using certificate checking and/or SSL MITM? Is this UTM firewalled, or other setup? Me and rob_f will find out what the problem is. These tunneling apps are an affront to my very being!
cookie_monster Posted December 3, 2009 Posted December 3, 2009 @cookie_monster What's your current setup? Transparent proxying or nay? Are we using certificate checking and/or SSL MITM? Is this UTM firewalled, or other setup? Me and rob_f will find out what the problem is. These tunneling apps are an affront to my very being! The device is a Smoothwall UTM rack box. I didn't actually set it up it was don't by another member of staff and smoothie support. No rush but if you can tell me where to check those settings I'll let you know. I can tell you that it's not transparent traffic could potentially bypass the smoothwall if it knew the ISP proxy address, but students are blocked from making those changes and I can't see how the TOR app could find it out. Thanks.
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