Web filtering is common in business and is becoming more common in churches and ministry.
Where I work, surfing social networking sites, streaming music and other activities started getting out of hand. In addition, many of these sites are often infected with malware and spyware and became a drain on IT resources. Give somebody an inch and they’ll take a mile. Upper management finally decided that web filtering was required.
Here’s what we did:
We looked at several solutions and decided to go Barracuda Networks Web Filtering hardware device as opposed to a software solution.
Setup for the device is very easy. Connect a mouse and a monitor and the built in Linux based configuration screens come up. I set the IP address and then I hooked it to our network and logged in using the web interface.
The Barracuda 210 allows filtering by content (pornography, gambling), applications (instant messaging, P2P networks,toolbars) and also by specific domains. Exceptions can be added in by creating users and groups. For example, LinkedIn and Facebook are social networking sites, but the human resources department may have a legitimate need to access those sites in the course of going through a hiring process.
The interface provides top domains visited as well as the top blocked domains along with charts, complete logs of every browser request being blocked. It also logs which computers on your network, if any, have malware and spyware on their computers.
The device does require a yearly subscription fee which keeps the device up to date with the latest spyware and malware definitions (handled automatically) to keep browsing safe.
Barracuda’s website offers the possibility to get an evaluation device free for 30 days. They’ll put you in touch with a local vendor that will get a unit over to you for testing. I believe it is worth the investment. It’s user-friendly, easy to install and it’s loaded with features allowing for detailed customization.
Is your church or ministry using web filtering? If so, what solution did you go with?
Philip says
opendns.com works great for this and its free.
wvpv says
we’re using OpenDNS
JayCaruso says
I love OpenDNS. We use it for DNS purposes and I use it at home as well.
Casey Riley says
We are using Iprism from St Bernard.
JayCaruso says
I’ve heard good things about Iprism.
Joe Corporon says
We have used both OpenDNS and DynDNS and both work well. For now, our current routers update better by using DynDNS.
Tim Voss says
We use a Watchguard Firebox (a little red box) and buy an annual subscription ($280) that blocks bad categories, specific sites, and image search. It works very well for us.
tim says
What model do you use?