Web filtering and monitoring
We offer a range of web filtering and monitoring solutions enabling you to apply your web use policies, with the most appropriate technology and toolset for your organisation.
For enquiries contact:
About web filtering and monitoring
Thanks to our framework agreement1 with selected suppliers, we're able to offer a broader and more flexible range of safeguarding solutions which offer web filtering, monitoring and reporting. Choose from a cloud-based or local appliance platform, or a hybrid of the two.
Services available through the framework agreement include:
- Web filtering
- Includes both the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) (illegal sexual content) and the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) (Prevent) lists
- Flexible choices, prebuilt or custom categories
- Monitoring
- Allowed and disallowed pages
- Ability to send alerts when conditions are met
- Reporting
- General or individual behaviours
- Distinguish between onsite and offsite activities
- Exportable formats
- Supplementary services
- Training available for administrators
- Support services
These services will enable you to safeguard potentially vulnerable learners from inappropriate or illegal content on the web and also help you to comply with your duty under the Prevent agenda.
Suppliers
Comtact (Zscaler)
A leading UK provider of security services to the educational sector enabling an environment of collaboration whereby education can flourish securely.
Contact [email protected].
BSI Group (Zscaler)
Experts at managing and securing an organisation’s most valuable asset – information. We combine our cloud security expertise with the Gartner Magic Quadrant leading Secure Web Gateway Solution: Zscaler.
Contact [email protected].
Gaia Technologies (SmoothWall)
Partnering with Smoothwall to offer complete security, monitoring and protection from malware and other external threats to your network.
Contact [email protected] .
iboss Cybersecurity (iboss)
Preferred supplier - cloud based services
Preferred supplier - hybrid cloud/local appliance based services
A patented, functionally rich web security platform utilising next-generation cloud technology, uniquely delivering elastic performance with granular reporting.
Contact [email protected].
Insight (Smoothwall)
Insight (SmoothWall) SmoothWall UTM and SWG offer 360° filtering , any content on the page, search term, domain, image, comment or text.
Contact [email protected].
Pinacl Solutions (SmoothWall)
Preferred supplier - local appliance based services
Drives innovation by crafting pioneering technology solutions that enable our customers to unlock new possibilities within their business.
Contact [email protected].
Softcat (CensorNet)
Offer specialist IT security experts, combined with industry-wide knowledge and focused customer service, to deliver trusted solutions to organisations.
Contact [email protected].
Compare solutions
Platform
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | CensorNet | SmoothWall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Cloud, local or hybrid | Cloud only | Cloud or hybrid | Local only |
Filtering
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | CensorNet | SmoothWall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internet Watch Foundation | Non-mandatory | Non-mandatory | Non-mandatory | Mandatory |
| Unlawful extremism content | Non-mandatory | Non-mandatory | Non-mandatory | Mandatory |
| Search terms | Included | Included uses safesearch | Included uses safesearch | Included |
| Prebuilt categories Custom categories Web borne threats Group/user based Time based options | Included | Included | Included | Included |
Key: Included Included, Non-mandatory non-mandatory, Mandatory mandatory, uses safesearch uses SafeSearch
Monitoring
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | CensorNet | SmoothWall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Successful pages Blocked pages Searches Conditional alerting | Included | Included | Included | Included |
Reporting
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | CensorNet | SmoothWall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General statistics Individual, prebuilt and custom reports | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Distinguish on-site and off-site activity | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Real-time reporting | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Scheduled reports | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Exportable formats | HTML Turbo Tab Tab delimited TXT | CSV XML | PDF CSV | Tab delimited CSV |
Key: Included Included, Not included not included
Supported admin gateways
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | CensorNet | SmoothWall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsers | HTML5 compliant incl. IE 9+ Chrome Safari Firefox Opera | Internet explorer Chrome Safari Firefox | ||
| Devices | All - decoupled from architecture | Tablets Mac OS devices Windows devices | Tablets Mac OS devices Windows devices Smartphones | |
Suppliers
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Zscaler | Softcat | SmoothWall |
|---|---|---|---|
| iBoss Cybersecurity | Comtact BSI Group | CensorNet | Pinacl Solutions UK Gaia Technologies Insight |
Key features and benefits
Improved safeguarding and compliance
Our solutions help you to safeguard learners from inappropriate or illegal content on the web. Internet Watch Foundation and the Unlawful Extremism Content filters also help you comply with the government’s Prevent agenda by blocking access to radical or extremist content. Together these measures help protect your organisation’s reputation and possible legal challenges.
Flexible service delivery
The framework solutions are available 24/7, so you don’t have to worry about services not being available at certain times of the day or night. You can choose from custom or pre-built filtering and reporting options. Additional web monitoring and reporting services will also help you to distinguish between someone stumbling upon a prohibited site and someone deliberately returning to that site for long periods at a time.
Efficiency gains
You can implement more fine-grained filtering options to allow access to specific groups or individuals and at particularly times of the day, enabling more flexibility for your users whilst also saving on bandwidth and increasing user productivity.
Saved purchasing time
We’ve saved you time and money by selecting a number of suppliers as part of a rigorous OJEU competitive tender process, so you can choose the preferred supplier or run a mini-competition with the suppliers we’ve selected.
Pricing and eligibility
Pricing will depend on the solution you choose. Applicants will be expected to place their own orders for an appropriate licence either through a mini-competition or directly with the preferred supplier.
See our buyers guide for details.
The multi-supplier web filtering and monitoring framework agreement is available to UK higher education institutions, further education and specialist colleges, research councils and other bodies whose core purpose is the support or advancement of further or higher education or research.
The service is also available to any National Research and Education Network (NREN) and the community it services where the NREN has either a direct connection to the Janet Network or the NREN is a member of the GÉANT consortium.
Web filtering service
Our free standard cloud-based, web filtering service provides you with a high level of protection against access to inappropriate content on the internet.
You can manage your own list of blocked or permitted URLs and search terms, filtering in accordance with your local policy and tailor these filters to match your exact needs. It also includes optional (paid for) features such as encryption of Google search results and user-based filtering.
The service uses SafetyNet, provided by RM Education on our behalf.
Web filtering service closure
Following the annual review of the web filtering service, we have made the decision to withdraw the service from 1 August 2018 and will no longer be accepting new applications.
We will be contacting existing users to offer transition advice and guidance before it closes. We, and our supplier, RM Education, will continue to support our existing web filtering service customers until the service is withdrawn.
If you have any questions about the web filtering service, email RM Education on [email protected] or call 0845 123 7821.
Web filtering service status and support
If there is a known issue with the web filtering service, details of the issue, monitoring updates and eventual resolution will be posted on a status page provided by RM Education.
You can also use this page to subscribe to updates on the web filtering service and to be emailed updates about specific issues. Details of RM scheduled maintenance are also available on this status page.
Fault reporting and technical support
This service is managed and supported by RM Education on our behalf and is monitored 24 hours a day. In the event of any disruption to the service during working hours RM will respond to any such service failure within one hour of notification (provided that notification is received before 16:00 Monday – Friday, excluding public holidays).
RM will respond to service failures detected outside working hours, but without any guarantee of response time, other than it will be within one hour of the start of the next working day. Back-ups of all updates will be made every 24 hours.
The RM support service is available from 08:00-18:00 Monday to Friday (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday and the first and last Monday in May). Faults will be progressed between these hours.
Telephone (preferred): 0845 123 7821 or email: [email protected]
Check that you have working internet access before logging a call.
If your web service is not working properly, it is strongly recommended that you contact your network manager in the first instance, to help diagnose where the problem lies. For instance, are other Jisc services working properly? Otherwise contact RM if:
- There is believed to be a technical problem with access to the service
- The local filtering list cannot be updated
- The filtering list is not working properly
All other enquiries
For further information on web filtering, including configuration and set-up, terms and conditions and technical support, visit the web filtering service pages on the community site.
Email the service desk to:
- Change your organisation's contact details
- Comment or ask questions about the way the service works, the level of service received, or the documentation for the service
Web filtering service level description
Service description
The service allows each organisation to manage its own list of blocked or permitted URLs for filtering in accordance with the organisation’s local policy and to tailor these filters to its needs. The filter settings are managed by authorised individuals at the organisations.
Hours of service
The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year.
Target availability
The target availability is 99.5% during the hours of service defined above, measured monthly over a 12 month period, excluding service-affecting maintenance.
The combined scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance time for the services will not be more than 1% of service time and not more than 0.2% of service time may be emergency maintenance. Scheduled maintenance is normally carried out with at least two weeks’ notice.
Fault management
Faults on the service may be reported at any time to the service provider RM Education by tel: 0845 123 7821 or via email: [email protected].
This helpline is staffed from 8am-6pm on Monday to Friday, (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday and the first and last Monday in May).
Faults will be progressed between these hours.
Resilience
The service has a mirrored set of proxy servers located in a separate data centre and has a failover system in place.
Security
Please ensure your organisation understands and adheres to the security policy.
Customer responsibilities
The customer is responsible, prior to using the service, for:
- Configuring the web filtering system for their own particular needs
- Configuring the local web browsers and routers/firewalls to ensure that all access to the web is routed through the web filtering system
The customer is also responsible on an ongoing basis for maintaining contact details.
Terms and conditions
Please ensure your organisation understands and adheres to the terms and conditions
Escalation
If you are experiencing an issue with the service, and wish to escalate the issue contact us via the service desk on tel: 0300 300 2212 or via email: [email protected].
Technical section
This service supports only IPv4 (it does not support IPv6).
The web filtering service allows organisations to:
- Filter using the mandatory Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) (illegal sexual content) and the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) (Prevent) lists
- Manage filter lists through a web-based administrative interface
- Apply filter lists by the time of day
- Customise the page that is displayed to the user when a web page is blocked
- Quickly permit or deny access to a specific page on the Internet
- Choose whether or not certain words or search terms are appropriate
- Prevent users from downloading particular file extensions such as .mp3 or .exe, that can waste Internet bandwidth or pose security threats
- Choose from existing filtering lists developed over years of experience: for example, a list of pages containing sexual content
- Apply individual filtering rules to users or groups of users with user based filtering
The web filtering service is a centralised web content filtering service, provided by RM Education and is based on the RM SafetyNet Plus product
These services are included within the scope of our ISO9001 certificate.
Footnotes
- 1 The framework agreement will run for an initial two year period starting 11 May 2016. This may be extended for a further two years depending on requirements and performance review.