Internet Filtering in Business

J

jtr8178

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 21, 2008
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266
What is everyone using for Internet filter for business?

We currently run WebSense, and it costs us $6,000 per year. All we care about blocking is Internet radio, porn, and the really scary sites. We are on version 6.x, and to leap to 7.x means I have to purchase a new server with upgraded hardware ... Sooo, just thought I would ask.

I'd really like a free or cheaper alternative. WebSense is great, but I feel it is overkill for us.
 
Depending on number of users I have used Squid and Dan's Guardian.
 
How many users are you filtering and what functionality do you want?
 
175 users. Just the items listed above. Porn sites, Internet radio, malicious websites.
 
We use a Linux box running tiny proxy and dansguardian on it. We've set up custom lists on top of the standard ones and it works great for 100+ users, plus it only cost us the parts for the Linux box.
 
If you just want cheap and easy, you can do the Barracuda Web Filter. I'd go with at least a 300 or 400 series appliance for that many users. It's not the best solution in the world but it works. Figure on a few grand for the appliance and probably $1k/year for updates and instant replacement if you want it. Astaro is much better but I don't know if you'd really save much money over Websense at all. Untangle is free if you want it to be. iPrizm I would put in about the same field as Barracuda. IronPort is really good but it's even more expensive than Websense.
 
My clients are small biz types that don't have a lot of extra cash to spend on extras like this, so I set them up on opendns. It does a pretty good job (considering it is free) of blocking most timewasters and nudie sites.
 
We use the built in content filtering of the Sonicwall. Does a pretty decent job all things considered.
 
I'll drop the Untangle pimp in here....
Basic "free" version is 1/2 decent. Schools 'n such....with that pay for bundle, the web filter becomes very good.
 
We use untangle and opendns. Works good. We will be moving to the paid version shortly I hope for both openDNS and untangle.
 
c0rpt3ch said:
We use a Linux box running tiny proxy and dansguardian on it. We've set up custom lists on top of the standard ones and it works great for 100+ users, plus it only cost us the parts for the Linux box.
Click to expand...

Dan's Guardian isn't free
 
Check out the Sonicwall "TotalSecure" line. Usually their content filtering is pretty costly, but the TotalSecure appliances bundle everything into one package (Content Filter, IPS, Gateway Antivirus).

Riley
 
Sophos has a pretty good web filter device, it does antivirus as well. It's easy to configure and the file scanning is pretty fast.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to look into all of them and see what fits for us. Sounds like there is a lot of options besides my company paying $6,000 per year perpetually. WebSense is just overkill for us. Sounds like a great option for Enterprise solutions with 500+ users.
 
What kind of firewall do you use?

We switched from Checkpoint / Websense to Palo Alto networks and its been working great. No per user fees and much granular control of things like the social media sites and stuff.
 
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