It is no secret that the internet is a dangerous place filled with all kinds of threats ranging from malware to phishing attacks, to inappropriate content or themes that enterprises go to great lengths to defend against daily.
But what about educational institutions like schools, universities, and other public places like libraries where minors and young adults have internet access? Are these environments truly as safe as they can be? Too often they’re not. Educational institutions, small businesses and even large enterprises do share many technical similarities. They all rely on networks connecting desktop and laptop computers, and wireless mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, and smart boards used in the classroom, all with access to the Internet. And let’s not forget the various servers used by the academic organization which are also connected to the same network. Unlike large enterprises, academic institutions have a different and some might argue more important imperative. It’s a necessity that educational institutions implement proper cyber security and access control measures, not only to protect their systems, teachers and administrators, but most importantly, the bright and impressionable minds accessing these systems and internet services.
Zenarmor understands the importance and unique security needs of educational institutions. Today, throughout the world, hundreds of academic institutions depend on Zenarmor and the enterprise-grade security it provides. For the remainder of this article, we are going to unpack the benefits and capabilities of Zenarmor and look at how it provides a formidable content filter, protecting minors and students alike from inappropriate online content and online threats. We’ll also cover how Zenarmor helps to satisfy governmental regulatory compliance requirements such as the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and supports educational institutions that want to qualify for the E-Program financial programs offered by the US Government.
A brief background about content filtering, and why using Zenarmor is a superior solution.
Content filtering, in a nutshell, is the process of screening or completely blocking objectionable websites, emails, applications, or links that may be inappropriate, offensive, or even outright malicious to the user or system accessing the content. The main goal of implementing content filtering controls in your network is to prevent the users and systems from accessing this questionable content, which could jeopardize your overall network security or expose the users to inappropriate or productivity-hindering websites that go against network usage or school’s policies.
Generally, content filtering is deployed on the perimeter firewall which monitors all outbound internet traffic against a predefined Access Control List (ACL) or policy. Popular ways of implementing ALC’s often involve the usage of a Squid proxy server integrated with the SquidGuard extension or in other cases DansGuardian which intercepts the outgoing traffic and checks it against the ACLs. This popular approach is effective and has been used to filter content over the years. However, it comes with some challenges that are often difficult for academic institutions to address: it requires the network administrator to create all the ACLs rules manually, and periodically perform manual updates, which becomes very time-consuming to maintain. This is especially true if the network is large, or complex or has changing policy requirements.
Zenarmor, on the other hand, addresses these administration issues by providing network administrators an intuitive web-based management dashboard called Zenconsole. Policy management is made easy with 60+ predefined web and application categories, covering thousands of application signatures that can enforce policy requirements without requiring client-based agents or proxy configurations. Furthermore, Zenarmor operates in a fully transparent mode, meaning that unlike proxy based security approaches which require altering the network traffic flow, Zenarmor does not require any changes to the network content or architecture to provide its protection, making deployment straightforward.
Importantly, Zenarmor utilizes AI-powered cloud-based web categorization that provides real-time classifications covering over 1 billion domains. This approach not only eliminates the time-consuming process of manually creating and updating ACLs, but is far more comprehensive than what network administrators can ever achieve on their own, no matter how motivated they are.
Figure 1: Zenconsole includes 60+ predefined web and application categories
More reasons why Zenarmor is the most complete content filtering solution.
Using Zenarmor certainly makes content filtering much easier compared with traditional approaches. However, its capabilities in protecting the organization don’t end there. Unlike other approaches, Zenarmor also provides advanced security features by combining AI-based cloud threat intelligence with deep packet inspection. The result is that Zenarmor is also able to block botnets, prevent sophisticated zero-day malware campaigns and phishing attacks, all in real-time. By comparison, these attacks can otherwise easily bypass traditional IP address, port number, or DNS based filtering techniques.
Figure 2: Zenconsole Essential and Advanced security options
But my organization consists of Administrators, Teachers and Students. How can I manage the policies for all of these groups independently to deliver human-centric security?
To efficiently manage users, groups, and resources accessing the network, most educational institutions already have directory services deployed like Microsoft Active Directory. Zenarmor is easily integrated with Active Directory. This allows network administrators to associate content filter policies with established users or groups, regardless of the device or IP address they are using.
This is a tremendously powerful combination because often in an educational environment, you will find that there is a need for varying levels of access. For example; perhaps one class group is doing a study about drugs. The network administrator could easily relax restrictions to this otherwise prohibited category for a particular class group only for the duration of their research. At the same time, all other users remain protected from this content. A similar approach could apply to a staff group; they could have more relaxed policies in comparison to the student population.
How does Zenarmor support compliance reporting?
Zenarmor’s policies are both powerful and flexible. They can also be set up to operate on a schedule. With little effort, a network administrator can allow a different social media or recreational internet access after school hours while automatically resuming restrictions during daytime classes. Zenconsole also makes the management of these policies very easy through the automatic synchronization across all Zenarmor firewalls protecting the school’s network.
No great content filtering solutions would be complete without analytics and reporting. Zenarmor offers best-in-class analytics and reporting. This provides network administrators complete visibility of their network traffic including real-time connection information and access to 60+ predefined reports. Importantly, these reports also provides school administrators with the documentation they need to substantiate their efforts to protect their students and organization.
Figure 3: Zenconsole predefined reporting view
I am interested in deploying Zenarmor to protect my school network. So how do I get started?
Because Zenarmor is a software-defined solution with zero hardware dependency it provides network administrators multiple cost effective deployment options to consider. Zenarmor can easily be deployed on most off-the-shelf hardware or virtualized environments. It supports all the most popular Unix/Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu, RedHat, and FreeBSD to name a few. Perhaps your institution has already invested in a firewall solution like pfSense or OPNsense. If so, you are already more than halfway to completing your Zenarmor deployment! Both pfSense and OPNsense make it incredibly easy to install Zenarmor through a plugin. If you are building your firewall and Zenarmor deployment from scratch using one of the many other supported operating systems, the installation is equally as easy. In most cases, you can have Zenarmor deployed in under 10 minutes using a simple CURL command.
How affordable is a content filtering solution like this?
Compared to commercial enterprises, educational institutions often have a smaller IT budget which may restrict these institutions’ access to the more sophisticated enterprise-grade content-filtering products on the market. To address this constraint, Zenarmor offers special pricing for educational institutions, allowing them to provide enterprise-grade security at a price they can afford.
A side note for MSPs reading this article.
If you are an MSP who has found this article informative and is looking to create new services or improve your offering for educational institutions, bundling Zenarmor into your current solution is an excellent way to provide immediate value to your clients. If you are interested in learning more about this, check out my previous article: How MSPs can leverage Zenarmor combined with open-source firewalls to increase the value of their offered services
Next Steps…
If you would like to get your feet wet and explore the many great capabilities of Zenarmor and how it can be used to protect your students, staff, and network, try Zenarmor on a 15-day trial, no credit cards required. Visit Zenarmor Education page to learn more about how Zenarmor will upgrade your institution’s network security.