Web filtering

Another one of my tasks is to make sure web filtering is in place. Can't have users going to Adult sites on the job or doing other non work related activities. The product we use is Surf Control Web Filter. When I started here over 5 years ago this is what was in place but it was installed on the Windows NT4.0 firewall (yes an NT4.0 firewall) at the time. It was suppose to go hand and hand with Checkpoint Firewall for NT. It worked OK. But as many people know that NT4.0 was a system hog in itself then putting Checkpoint on it and Surf Control on top of that put a strain on the server. So after a while of dealing with that crappy box and all the problems I've had with it (firewall crashed and I had to get a non windows firewall). Anyway I've install Surf Control on it's own server and got it filtering the web traffic.

The installation went OK you need either an SQL server to talk to or MSDE on the box itself. I went to MSDE route. I want this box to depend on itself only. At the time since our switched didn't allow rx tx on the SPAN port (or maybe I just didn't spend enough time trying to figure that out) we used a HUB since that allowed writeback. What am I talking about? In order for Surf Control to effectively block sites it has to capture packets and determine it's nature and either let it go or put a block on it sending a message to the users screen. This is what I am talking about when I say writeback or rx and tx. Since our network upgrade I was able to toss out that HUB and properly configure my new Cisco 4506 to SPAN with rx, tx. So now Surf is blocking site on a switch like it should.

The product itself has nice features. Realtime logging, categorization of sites, reporting of user usage, most visited site in a given time etc. It also integrates with Active Directory (now). But the product is a little flaky and buggy. It takes some time to figure out and you'll find yourself on their knowledgebase very often. I guess I've built up a tolerance for it's buggyness and just cope with it. After all I do know how to get it to work.