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Internet Filter for Education
General Overview
IM2Filter Internet Filtering provides educational organizations with peace of mind,
ensuring that students and staff are protected from the Internet's inappropriate
content. While in the classroom or in the school libraries, IM2Filter Internet
Filtering allows administrators to create a wide range of policies that regulate
Internet usage throughout a school system to protect the school from legal liabilities
and keep students on task while using school computing resources. With IM2Filter
Internet Filtering, school administrators can remain confident that students are
provided with online safety, ultimately leading to a safe and secure Internet experience.
This solution brings organizations in line with CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) and TPM (Technology
Protection Measure), as well as the organization's own AUP (Acceptable Use Policy).
Technical Overview
By default the IM2Filter solution is a transparent Linux server that has the capabilities
of filtering a school from unwanted or undesirable HTTP content. It is traditionally
installed in line with the network traffic. Another great technical feature is that
it can be integrated with existing Microsoft WindowsT and Novell NetwareT directory
services to offer per user filtering.
Functional Overview
Distributed Administration
The Administrator can give group or departmental heads control over schools or departments
for which they are responsible. All policies can be reviewed by the Network Administrator
to ensure that groups and departments are in-line with current enterprise Internet
usage policies. Distributing the administration of the Filter reduces the load for
Network Administrators and empowers other levels of management in the organization
to enforce control of Internet usage policies.
Web-Based Administration
The web-based administration of the solution gives educational organizations the
ability to manage the Filtering solution and its policies anytime and anywhere.
Global, Group, and Per-User Filtering
With multiple levels of filtering, Network Administrators can enforce global policies
across the entire network or manage multiple policies based on groups or users.
Moving users and groups to other existing Internet usage policies, or creating new
Internet usage policies, is quick and simple. This feature can allow some groups
to be in compliance with CIPA and TPM (i.e. students), but allow other groups to be
unregulated or have less restricted access (i.e. teachers).
Scheduled Filtering and Filtering Overrides
Network Administrators can manage time of day settings for the filtering and adjust
the filtering policies as required. Additionally, groups and individual users can
be set to override the filter (although silent tracking can still be performed).
Silent Tracking
Utilizing silent tracking, the educational organizations will be able to survey,
examine, and understand Internet usage within their system, and establish filtering
policies based on the information. Administrators can determine which users are
accessing which sites.
Granular Categorization
Educational organizations can choose from over 42 categories of filtering for the
institution. Moreover, customized Whitelists and Blacklists can be created to meet
the specific filtering polices of the organization.
Whitelists and Blacklists
Educational organizations can create lists of acceptable or unacceptable websites.
In those instances where the Administration wishes to override the categorization
of a site, the Administrators could Whitelist (allow) or Blacklist (disallow) the
site.
Comprehensive Reporting
Included with the filtering solution, educational institutions have the ability
to track, view and report on Internet activities within the organization. Reports
can be exported to standard programs including Crystal Reports and Excel.
Reports can be run on:
- User IDs, User Groups, IP Addresses, dates and times
- Site URL or IP address (destinations), site categories, whether sites were accessed
or blocked, whether site visit violates policy violations
- Reports are capable of displaying all visits containing a queried keyword or URL
- Reports can be executed to display policy violations only
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