eejit Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Is anyone out there using Securus? We're in the middle of a trial at the moment. It seems pretty good at catching kids up to "naughty stuff", although we have found some bullying too. How do you cope with the amount of violations it captures? It's a pity it doesn't come with some kind of Active Directory integration so that you could easily seperate pupils and staff before you began monitoring them. One thing it's shown us is that the Instant Messaging problem we thought we'd solved is well and truely alive with Polish and Australian versions of online messenger.
tarquel Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Can you tell us (me lol) a bit more about it? Sounds interesting but what is it exactly? Ta, N
Geoff Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Google said: http://www.securitysoft.co.uk/products.htm#education
Diello Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Funnily enough - just literally got back from a meeting at a local school that's also trialling it. Have to say, I'm rather impressed with it. Especially the way it can even capture off-network workstations! Seems they get alot of false positives, but still. Seems a little expensive, but certainly something I'll be looking into in more depth later.
eejit Posted June 17, 2005 Author Posted June 17, 2005 It's a box that sits on the network with some bespoke operating system on it, seems to be linux based. The workstations get a client to run which is small - about 1 Mb and comes in an .msi which is handy. I'm not sure how the client works, and to be honest it's been driving me nuts trying to figure it out, but basically it captures any 'violation' on a computer screen. Now a violation can be swearing, bullying racism, pornography, paedophilia etc., etc. The violations are not just captured in Internet Explorer, but EVERYWHERE. If someone opens up notepad or anything and types "I'm gonna beat u up" for instance, that'll be captured. "beat u" is a violation. So, once there is a violation you can go to any workstation and put the IP address of the Securus box into a browser, log in and check out what's been happening. What you get is the computer name, the logged in username, the IP address, a screen dump of the violation and what word or phrase caused the violation. When I saw that they were sending screen dumps to the securus box I thought that the network would grind to a halt, but there seems to be no difference that I can see. If a client cannot connect to it's server for any reason it'll store the violations locally until it next makes contact. We haven't done this during our trial, and tbh I'm not sure that we would at all, but that means that if you install it on a teachers laptop, it'll continue recording violations while they're surfing the net at home during the weekend and upload the whole lot when they connect to the network again on Monday morning Also, the violations are not just captured because you've typed something, it's anything that appears on the screen, so if you open an email with swearing that will be captured.
Ric_ Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 If a client cannot connect to it's server for any reason it'll store the violations locally until it next makes contact. We haven't done this during our trial, and tbh I'm not sure that we would at all, but that means that if you install it on a teachers laptop, it'll continue recording violations while they're surfing the net at home during the weekend and upload the whole lot when they connect to the network again on Monday morning Very big brother!! I like the sound of that a lot. Also, the violations are not just captured because you've typed something, it's anything that appears on the screen, so if you open an email with swearing that will be captured. Could be handy in proving bullying cases where the fools delete the emails!
MkII Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Wow! amazing! etc... Thanks for the heads up eejit! Sounds like somebody could be in for a lot of extra work:( Any idea how much it costs?
eejit Posted June 17, 2005 Author Posted June 17, 2005 Mark - I can't remember the figures off the top of my head, but the box is something under a grand (probably £995) then it's so much a client (I think £8-10). I'll post the proper figures on Monday when I can get my hands on them.
eejit Posted June 20, 2005 Author Posted June 20, 2005 Ok, the Securus box is £960 and the clients range from £9 to £13 depending on how many you have. You can take money from the "Social Inclusion" and "Behavior Management" budgets to help pay for it (It sure ain't coming out of mine ) They're giving out trials left, right and centre, so it's worth contacting them. It's interesting to see what's going on in your network behind your back if nothing else. They have a few resellers around the country I think, for us in Essex and East London it's a company called Computer Talk. (020 8595 7744 if anyone's interested, but all you guys seem to be in Lancs. or Wales)
StewartKnight Posted June 21, 2005 Posted June 21, 2005 We've purchased Securus from a guy called Steve Ogden who deals with the North of England: 0870 991 8886 DDI 07830 312880 M It's very clever at what it does, and you soon learn which "violations" to ignore, but the biggest tip I can give you is, don't tell the students you've got it, because our kids have gone nuts, thinking it's too "big brother", which is strange, considering how many of the watch "big brother" and don't see anything wrong with that!! We managed to help a girl who was being bullied, so it's worth using. Stewart Knight Network Manager Appleby Grammar School
eejit Posted June 28, 2005 Author Posted June 28, 2005 Stewart, how do you find the reporting aspect of it? It would be nice to view just the violations for: "IT Room03" - Period3, for instance. There is no way (that I can see) that you can group PCs into different rooms. You can, of course, export the violations to a CSV and maybe manipulate the data once you're in excel, but it would be nice if the box itself showed a lot more varied reports.
StewartKnight Posted June 28, 2005 Posted June 28, 2005 my school isn't big enough for that to be a problem, we only have 75 (networked) PCs here and less than 500 students, which is probably the reason we're one of the few schools that can afford it!
woody Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 Thanks to Stewart, we are now trialling Securus too. I have been told that currently the server is £480 and I can't remember the client prices but the ones mentioned previous sound right. However, they say that version 3 is out soon and that the prices will be cheaper so it's worth waiting a little. I hope that v3 will have more reporting facilities, and at least a basic search. But I can't fault Securus as a whole, I think it is amazing how it captures anything anywhere that appears or is typed in. We have had one boy who was posting links to porn clips onto a forum while at home, but then returning to the forum in school. I'm sure his parents will be interested in that!
tarquel Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 This sounds like a real nice system - how much drain on the network is there from this btw? (if no-one has already asked) Cheers, Nath
ChrisH Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 I will have to look at this in september when hopefully V3 will be out. I have only got to hold out until tommorow dinner then no kids for 5 weeks
woody Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 As far as I can see there has been no drain on network bandwidth. Securus runs on it's own tailor made server so it's not touching the 'big' servers on the network. How do I attach an image onto this post? When I figure it out, I will post a piccy of the server!
ChrisH Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 It the bottom left button above the text dialog you use to input posts. Looks like the one is MS applications.
woody Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 Let's see if this works! Back http://www.nctc.cumbria.sch.uk/DSC00627.jpg Front http://www.nctc.cumbria.sch.uk/DSC00626.jpg
eejit Posted June 30, 2005 Author Posted June 30, 2005 Cheers for the pix, Mark. I think we can all agree that it's pretty darn sexy Now, Mark, are you sure about the £480 price tag? We were quoted a lot more (I think, I'll double check later)
ChrisH Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 Everything is always more expensive down south. Surely you should know that by now
eejit Posted June 30, 2005 Author Posted June 30, 2005 That's right Chris, but 100% is a bit much. Can you tell me who your supplier is Mark and we'll try and get the same deal. Cheers.
StewartKnight Posted June 30, 2005 Posted June 30, 2005 If you look on the 1st page, you'll see I posted Steve Ogdens number. I recommended him to Mark. If you contact him, please mention my name!!!
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