month. It catches about 95% of all spam. There is an offsite mailbox
teachers can log into to check their spam although most never do. If I
ever need certain addresses black or white listed for the entire school,
I just email my provider and ask them to do that. (Some Postini
providers have tech logons, so the tech can do this. My company does
not offer that.) Individual users can go in and white / black list
their own email addresses, but again, almost nobody at my school does
this.
We added a Cymphonix box in August for bandwidth management and
filtering. It has been very easy to use. I have only had six requests
to unblock a site that a teacher needed access to. Like most filters,
it is not perfect. It does not do a great job with images. It does do
a good job with filter avoidance and porn sites.
I can use my Active Directory groups and create filtering and bandwidth
management by group. For example, my development group wants to use
Facebook, but the admin doesn't want any students accessing it. That is
easy to do with Cymphonix.
Renee Ramig
Seven Hills School
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Bill Perpelitt
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 10:49 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: What Content Filtering Software do you use?
Pamela,
I've used Google Postini for email filtering. Everything is filtered in
the
cloud. In general, very happy with it and the cost. There are
competitors
that might have an edge -- have not looked recently. Has lots of
flexibility, which I like as an admin.
We use Fortinet for filtering, gateway antivirus, intrusion protection,
firewall. Reporting is OK, but not fantastic. Does a decent all-around
job
of controlling traffic and stopping access to inappropriate sites. They
are
very fast to update their database. LightspeedSystems has fantastic
filtering and reporting features. More reports than you can possibly
imagine. Some highlights: "suspicious search engine queries" report --
very
helpful. I've only heard great news about Lightspeed and they are
specifically designed for k-12 schools. I had an in-house demo for
about 2
months.
The current trend in "next-generation firewalls" is to use application
control to determine what users can access. So, for example, you can
allow
Youtube, but only up to a certain percentage of bandwidth. Palo Alto
Networks is apparently the leader in this area. Other vendors are just
catching up now.
Best,
Bill Perpelitt
Technology Director
Delphian School
http://www.Delphian.org/
20950 SW Rock Creek Road
Sheridan, OR 97378
503-843-3521
Student view of Delphian:
http://www.delphian.org/interview
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Pamela Livingston
<livingstonp@mac.com>wrote:
> Dear ISED-L Colleagues (with apologies for cross posting),
>
> On 5/17 I'll be joining TEAM Charter Schools in Newark, NJ as Dir. of
IT.
> I am hoping to ask any Tech Directors/Network Managers out there a
> question.
>
> What content filtering appliance (for incoming and outgoing mail -
> protecting the network and computers and also preventing access to
> inappropriate Websites - and hopefully allowing some easy reports) do
you
> use and are you happy with it? Any pitfalls/challenges/caveats to
report?
>
> We will have elementary school students, plus we accept Federal money,
so
> are required to do some filtering. I've used Barracuda as well as
Websense
> before, but that was several years back.
>
> Thanks very much in advance,
> Pamela
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Pamela Livingston
> livingstonp@mac.com
> Author of "1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work"
> Blog: http://1-to-1learning.blogspot.com
> Twitter: plivings
> 973-476-4819
>
>
>
>
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