Preventing inappropriate viewing of web pages by employees, children, etc. is a mandate for many organizations, but these days simply surfing the web and stumbling across a compromised page can infect your computer with a wide range of malware. Untangle offers a comprehensive web content filtering solution that protects your organization against inappropriate access and unintentional infection by visiting rogue websites.

Web Filtering Issues

Without an adequate web content filtering solution and procedures for compliance, your organization is significantly vulnerable to lost productivity, high Internet bandwidth consumption, and infection:

• Children seeing web content that is simply inappropriate for their age
• People wasting time on social networking sites during work hours
• Internet bandwidth being consumed by live TV- or video-streaming sites
• Compromise of end-user computers simply by surfing web sites infected with viruses, spyware, and other malware

Web Content Compliance

Many organizations are compelled to provide web content filtering due to local or national legislation.

• In the US, schools and public libraries are required to adhere to the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in order to remain eligible for Federal funding.
• Certain US states can hold employers liable for "creating a hostile environment" if an employee sees material on another's workspace that they find offensive.
• A number of countries specifically require that internet access be filtered

Recommendation

If robust web content filtering is your primary need, consider the Untangle Standard package, which includes eSoft Web Filter.

• Filter websites by critical categories for CIPA such as Pornography, Illegal Drugs, Dating, and Hate and Aggression, as well as manage access to web mail, shopping, proxies, and other sites
• Control Internet usage based on 53 categories that covers over 100 million URLs.
• URLs that have not been seen before are processed and classified in real-time, allowing you to stay one step ahead
• Block https/ssl sessions by IP, thwarting a popular work around for standard web filtering solutions
• Mandate SafeSearch usage across all major search engines, centrally.

• Policy Management – Create web usage policies and rules based on user and/or time of day, e.g. for teachers, staff, and students of different age groups.
• Monitoring - Untangle Reports lets you see who’s doing what on your network, including reporting by active directory user name. This lets you monitor for violations of your acceptable use policy and identify suspect behavior
• Control Instant Messenger and other P2P applications – port hopping applications such as instant messenger and bit torrent can bypass standard firewall rules, consume network traffic, introduce malware, and open a door for predators.
• Block Viruses, Spyware, Spam, Phish, and Other Malware – Untangle scans all traffic including http and ftp for viruses, worms, spyware, phishing, and other threats to protect your network and the personal information of your users.