Surfcontrol

D

DopefishLives

Weaksauce
Joined
May 3, 2006
Messages
74
Who has used it in a work enviroment? What are your thoughts? Does it work well at prohibiting most sites in the pre-formed catagories? How about specific location/PC lockdown, etc.

We have this software and it seems okay so far but I dont like that it wont track webtraffic by WINS name. We run DHCP so the only option it offers us to restrict specific PC's is MAC address. :/
 
Good program. I only use the mail side, but I've dabbled with their content filtering. It had some cool features. The live monitor is pretty slick, but it didn't win me over enough to move us from Websense. So are you trying to filter by machine rather than individual users?? We filter by NT accounts. Managers have more access than, say, Domain Users.
 
We use it in our enterprise. PITA if you ask me. We had to have multiple servers on multiple segments to filter out 2000 users.

I am going to be looking at Websense this summer, as our 3 year renewal for surfcontrol is up.
 
Darthkim said:
We use it in our enterprise. PITA if you ask me. We had to have multiple servers on multiple segments to filter out 2000 users.

I am going to be looking at Websense this summer, as our 3 year renewal for surfcontrol is up.
Click to expand...


You'll love Websense bro.
 
Darthkim said:
We use it in our enterprise. PITA if you ask me. We had to have multiple servers on multiple segments to filter out 2000 users.

I am going to be looking at Websense this summer, as our 3 year renewal for surfcontrol is up.
Click to expand...
Agreed!

I've used the ISA 2004 addon. I didn't like it at all. It had many little bugs, memory leaks, and was processor hog. I would definitly recommend Websense.
 
my new company uses surfcontrol but ive only been working for 4 weeks. ive only played with SC a few times, but haven't really had much time with it. my previous company used websense and it was nice. ill try to get one of my co-workers to post and answer your question.
 
Back when it was Surfwatch, I loved it. You could type "super" in the filter and it would automatically block every damn site with "super" in it, even if you just typed it in a post in a forum.

Surfcontrol... that was after they were bought out, we ran that for a few months, then dropped it like a bad habit.
 
We are currently an NT domain preparing to migrate in the next year to AD. However since most of our security is 'region-based' due to where the PC's are located in the complex we want to continue to filter by department or section of PC's rather than log on.

Websense is looking more promising. SC's features dont function too well for us and several of our PC's arent even detected by it. My major problem is that they dont allow you to track and lockdown PC's by WINS name but by IP only. We are DHCP and it would really screw us up to go static. Their support offered MAC addressing as a comprimise but when we tested it the MAC addresses were ignored by SurfControl and exceptions/rules would only function if attached by IP address.

We are regreting the purchase now... especially since we have a Cisco PIX 515 and have read that Websense has a capable client that will run on the PIX. We currently have SurfControl running on a dedicated server. :/

Main needs/desires:
-Filter job search/adult content/spyware/etc
-Monitoring/Logging not needed, content filtering/blocking is our only intent
-Support both NT and AD networks
-Allow webfiltering or web allowances to be set by PC
-Allow webfiltering or web allowances to be set by WINS or MAC, Static IP is useless
-Optionally run on a Cisco PIX 515
 
Wouldn't you want to track/control usage by user accounts instead of netbios names? WINS will hopefully be non-existant on your new network anyways (unless you're stuck with old 9X clients).

I would think that controlling web usage makes more sense via user accounts/groups, than just computer names. Haven't used this proggie..have used ISA.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Wouldn't you want to track/control usage by user accounts instead of netbios names? WINS will hopefully be non-existant on your new network anyways (unless you're stuck with old 9X clients).

I would think that controlling web usage makes more sense via user accounts/groups, than just computer names. Haven't used this proggie..have used ISA.
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Well, we work in hospitality, and we have several large departments. In those departments are mixed areas where PC's need to be used for internet access while others need none and some only need access to certain pages (front desk areas for example) If it was done by user account, someone could easily find another users log on (For some reason people dont find these sacred) and log on and have full access.

We want to control per PC for that reason if possible.

EDIT: We could potentially utilize limitations by username, but will that work on an NT domain? We arent going AD for quite some time.
 
The school I took computer classes at uses SurfControl. It works well in the fact that kids try to find proxies to get around it, and they always end up blocking them :)
My other school uses N2H2.
 
DopefishLives said:
Sadly. We are still about 9mo-1 year away from AD conversion due to corporate decisions....
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I feel your pain. We were NT4 until about a year ago. 2003 has made my life so much easier. :) Unfortunatly we still have lots of NT4 workstations. Cringe.
 
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