Choosing the right web filter for your school is challenging — how do you ensure you find a web filter that can keep students safe online, manage devices and maintain compliance? Before you choose a web filter for your school, here are 8 things you need to consider:
Device Support for all OS’s
Netsweeper’s client filtering technology ensures filtering is enforced on all devices (Windows, Mac, Chrome, Android, and iOS) and will monitor internet traffic on those devices, even when they are not connected to a Netsweeper filtered network.
Real-Time Data Reporting
Managing a web filtering platform means making decisions about filtering policies and incidents. This requires meaningful information about student habits on your network. Out-of-the-box reports are available from initial deployment. You can also configure almost any type of report to perform the network analytics you need. On-demand or scheduled reports are easy to create, and they can be viewed in the WebAdmin or delivered automatically to specific students.
Regulatory Compliance
Netsweeper has web filtering and monitoring solutions that help schools comply with CIPA requirements by blocking adult content such as hacking, criminal skills, and illegal activities. We can also enforce SafeSearch across all popular web search engines, monitor all internet activity, create comprehensive reports, configure deny and allow lists, and more.
Delegated Administration
Delegated administration enables system operators to push web filtering policy management to individuals and locations outside the core operations center, reducing system management overhead and allowing filtering to be tailored to their specific needs.
Social Media Controls, Including YouTube and Vimeo
Having the ability to control access to social media platforms is crucial. While social media provides opportunities for learning, it can also be problematic, such as when it displays inappropriate content. To keep students safe on social media with web filtering, you can block specific features of social media platforms, such as the ability to view comments.
SSL Decryption
At Netsweeper, we’ve developed selective SSL/TLS decryption, which is our NSProxy. In addition to being able to select which websites you want to decrypt, you can also granularly filter social media websites, meaning that you’ll have control over features such as posting or chatting and will be able to block students from visiting a post on Twitter about self-harm or a Facebook page for a hate group. The NSProxy is available across platforms and devices.
Student Safety Detection
It’s critical that education providers have the tools for student monitoring to ensure that they can accurately detect and assess harmful student behavior in order to intervene early to effectively mitigate potential harmful activity. onGuard works both online and offline, scanning internet content, desktop content, and student-submitted data in real-time.
Flexible Deployment Methods
Built for cloud computing models, our flexible deployment options allow you to take advantage of Netsweeper’s cloud infrastructure and scalability or leverage your existing on-premise systems.
Netsweeper is a leading provider of online student safety solutions worldwide. Our suite of software and network solutions helps schools safeguard students, regardless of how they access the online world. The scale of the internet is larger than any list and larger than any one network. Netsweeper uses advanced AI to identify harmful online content, contact, conduct, and commerce in real-time. Founded in 1999, Netsweeper has a global presence servicing a network footprint of over 1 billion users and operates in over 60 countries.