Good Internet filters (business)

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 09:27

We are currently using Scansafe as our company internet filter. It looks ahead and blocks sites containing certain words or phrases.
However there are a lot of requests to add sites to the global allow list from employees. These are sites such as financial advise websites and things to do with money.

Scansafe works up by blocking or allowing different categories weapons, pornography, stocks/shares, music etc. We have a general working hours group, default and global allow list of sites.

I seem to be forever adding sites to the global allow list that scansafe blocks, thinking they are bad

What is a good internet filter that actually filters websites properly based on categories?

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 10:00

WebMarshal

As good as the Marshal contained URL categories are, its not perfect - and no filter ever will be.

Witor · 23 Jul 2009 at 10:06

We use websense at work.

Pretty reliable, and categories are very decent right off the bat...

dave2kdh · 23 Jul 2009 at 12:08

I've recently put WebMarshal at our company here too, very good product and as said above not perfect but what is.

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 12:24

I remember my boss saying he went for scansafe because we dont have to set anything up or worry about it.

http://www.ancoris.com/s/cs/wm/wm_intro.shtml

Does say its a fully managed service

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 12:28

Marshal do a 30 day fully functional trial of WebMarshal. Latest version is very nice.

Dump it on a Windows XP workstation and have a play.

EYEREX · 23 Jul 2009 at 12:33

Can you use opendns on a company's internet

neil_g · 23 Jul 2009 at 13:12

we use bloxx hardware appliances, can do user/group based policies. can pull user details from domain controllers etc.

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 13:38

Sin_Chase said:
Marshal do a 30 day fully functional trial of WebMarshal. Latest version is very nice.

Dump it on a Windows XP workstation and have a play.

If i download it and install it on one machine, would i just use another machine, say mine, to test if certain pages are or are not working?

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 15:27

Guest2 said:
If i download it and install it on one machine, would i just use another machine, say mine, to test if certain pages are or are not working?

Yup.

Tell it whatever port you want to use on install, say 9090 then point a test desktop proxy to your machine IP on 9090

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 15:31

thanks. how about if my test user was on Citrix (my test laptop seems to have disappeared) ive been using a test user with standard domain user access within citrix

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 15:35

WebMarshal works off NTLM or IP auth.

You can import directly from Active Directory with an AD Connector or specify an IP address as a user to control.

Will work fine with citrix, as long as they log in as their domain user and their proxy points at your text box.

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 16:07

Thanks for this guys.

Going to leave it until my boss returns next week. Dont want anything to mess up with the net/citrix/ad/servers or anything else whilst he isnt here because i have been playing around with new programs

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 16:26

WebMarshal wont touch ANY of your infrastructure.

It only uses AD to pull in users, its a standalone install on whatever system you put it on and will come off cleanly.

The only thing you need to change is where the proxy points

Guest2 · 23 Jul 2009 at 16:55

Sin_Chase said:
WebMarshal wont touch ANY of your infrastructure.

maybe not, but it picked up our usual proxy settings and ip range then said something about making available to all users. At that point i got scared and uninstalled

Sin_Chase · 23 Jul 2009 at 17:15

Guest2 said:
maybe not, but it picked up our usual proxy settings and ip range then said something about making available to all users. At that point i got scared and uninstalled

Rofl, pansy.