FoxTalk

The South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services have recently announced the “Dual ISP” program. This means that schools can choose to use a secondary ISP at their school for redundancy or performance reasons.

DECS has also announced that schools must use the same filtering system as mandated centrally and cannot use alternative filtering products. They have also stated that schools must use the standard infrastructure ISA Proxy appliances provided by DECS to manage access to a second ISP.

What are the problems with this?

When managing student activities at the school a range of tools are required. While the DECS solution may provide schools with good levels of Internet filtering, there are several other issues that must be dealt with and the following systems should be put in place.

• Internet Quota Control or Billing systems
• Detailed and effective Internet Reporting
• Auditing for student Internet access
• Auditing for staff Internet access

How can NetFox help?

If you are using NetFox currently, or are looking at doing so in the future, the above issues can be addressed. Furthermore, NetFox can be implemented to work with the DECS guidelines and ensure that you are following the correct practices.

How can NetFox be implemented to work with DECS?

There are two options for implementing NetFox with the standard DECS infrastructure.

Using the NetFox Appliance

The NetFox applicance can be placed in your network as an “intermediate” proxy server. It will perform billing and reporting as normal and can also offer additional filtering to the DECS solution. NetFox provides more filtering options than the DECS solution for example, forcing the use of safe google searches.

When implemented, NetFox will connect to the your school's ISA proxy as an upstream proxy. You will need to create a “netfox” user on your ISA server and use the “single user” upstream option in the NetFox configuration. You can also set NetFox to choose an upstream proxy depending on the site that is requested.

Using NetFox Business Online

The NetFox Business Online service will be available in South Australia around the end of August. Schools will be able to use it for reporting on staff and student Internet usage from their DECS ISA Proxy server without the need for any additional hardware. An agent is installed on the ISA proxy server which sends all logs to the NetFox Business Online servers. See our product page for more details.

Soon after launch we will be adding billing capabilities and a portal designed specifically for teaching staff to manage their students on-line.

How do I find out more?

Send us an email or give us a call if you need assistance or have questions you need answered. Our details are here.