 Safe Browsing
It is increasingly common for hackers and identity thieves to target schools, teachers, and students. Malevolent websites laden with spyware, malware, or fraudulent theft identity sites are frequently targeted directly at children. eSoft identifies and provides real-time protection for schools from thousands of new malicious websites every day and allows school and library administrators to completely protect their network from new threats.
eSoft also optionally blocks viruses at the gateway before they reach network computers, disallows Instant Messaging file transfers and blocks MP3s, streaming video, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) uploads and downloads.
Easy To Manage
eSoft’s management interface is acclaimed for its ease of use and its ability to simplify complex security and network management tasks. School IT staff is freed up to focus on other activities. Plus, since eSoft’s web filtering solution sits on an appliance, there’s no need to worry about hardware and compatibility issues.
“The web configuration interface is well laid out and is easy to follow.”
—Justin Peltier, SC Magazine
Flexible policy settings
IT administrators may customize Internet usage policies by user and group. Teachers can have one policy while students utilize another policy. With Active Directory integration, setup and ongoing administration is a snap. Additionally, the Web ThreatPak enforces safe search on major search engines such as Google.
 Award-Winning Reporting with ThreatMonitor
In an educational environment, administrators must be aware of what is happening on their network. eSoft's ThreatMonitor provides the industry's best single screen overview of a network. eSoft's Intrusion Prevention monitors for evidence of bot and worm infections on the local network as well as stopping hackers cold.
|
Compliance with Federal Law
In the U.S., public schools, private non-profit schools with endowments of less than $50 million, and libraries are all subject to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (also known as CIPA or HR4577). CIPA is a federal law that requires recipients of funds from the FCC’s E-Rate program to block minors from accessing specific types of content, monitor minors’ Internet activity, and assure their safety when using Instant Messaging, email, and chat rooms. E-Rate funds can save schools up to 90 percent on telecommunications services and networking equipment, so failure to enact measures that monitor and filter web use can be expensive for schools and libraries. eSoft’s Web ThreatPak gives a school the ability to fully comply with CIPA.
Reduced Legal Liability
In addition to the legal, financial, political, and parental pressure on schools to implement Internet usage controls, there is the added incentive of reducing the risk of litigation. Schools and libraries that allow obscene images to be displayed on computers open themselves up to sexual harrassment lawsuits. Students who download illegal software, illegal music and videos, etc., also put the school at risk of legal action from copyright holders. By implementing eSoft’s Web ThreatPak and blocking at-risk applications and website categories, schools can mitigate the risk of legal action.
 Conserve and manage expensive bandwidth
MP3s, streaming video, P2P applications, and online games require a great deal of bandwidth and can affect other students' ability to use the Internet for educational purposes. With eSoft, schools can block P2P applications as well as websites dedicated to streaming videos and music. Plus, on the InstaGate, administrators can setup QoS policies to prioritize bandwidth usage on a per-computer or per-application basis. To further optimize bandwidht usage and accelerate performance (sometimes called WAN acceleration), eSoft caches common web pages and graphics.
“[ThreatMonitor is a] one-stop shop for all that is going on in the network environment.”
—Peter Stephenson, SC Magazine
|
Want to print out this page and share it with a colleague? Try the PDF version, a two-page printable datasheet for schools. The