Teachers want the ability to use powerful web content in the classroom, but education authorities cannot risk exposing students to inappropriate content.
To prevent students from misusing internet access and to protect them from accidentally discovering harmful / inappropriate content, schools need a solution that will:
- Block harmful content or specific domains
- Proactively monitor students’ internet activity to ensure positive learning outcomes
Schools must also protect their investment in devices like laptops and tablets from viruses and malware. Most ‘network security’ solutions offer far more functionality than a school deploying the internet for the first time needs… with a price tag to match.
- Content filters that are designed to handle lots of complicated network traffic require expensive hardware and have unnecessary features that introduce unwanted complexity
- When taking the first steps towards connected classrooms, you simply need the ability to block broad categories of dangerous content along with the flexibility to block/unblock domains depending on your authority’s ‘appropriate usage’ policies
- Cloud-based content filters need high-speed internet connection to work effectively
- Subscription firewalls have high ongoing costs and ‘per request’ licence pricing can result in unexpected charges if your requirement grows. An ideal solution for schools would have no vendor lock in, allow you to create your own block lists and have fixed pricing so that you know how much budget to allocate
To be practical, schools need network security solutions that more closely fits the feature need, budget and local technical expertise.