Websense: Site blocking at Colleges?

I work at a college that uses Websense to block and filter websites
for reasons of security and bandwidth. Basically, this includes any
multi-media sites or files (e.g. RealPlayer streams), any web-based
email system, and just about anything that can remotely be defined as
"entertainment." Faculty and students have complained, but the
network administrators state that this is needed in order to protect
the network.

I contacted Websense to find out if they have any other colleges or
universities as current customers, but the sales rep I spoke to
admitted that he didn't know of any. From the research I've done, it
looks like a few colleges used Websense in the late 1990s and as late
as 2002 (mostly in the UK), but I can't find any colleges presently
using it.

Does anyone know of any public institutions of higher education that
block categories of websites? Does anyone have any first-hand
experience of this at their college?

Thanks,
(Take out the numbers for my valid email
address.)

Thomas M. Heaney

"Thomas M. Heaney" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> I work at a college that uses Websense to block and filter websites
> for reasons of security and bandwidth. Basically, this includes any
> multi-media sites or files (e.g. RealPlayer streams), any web-based
> email system, and just about anything that can remotely be defined as
> "entertainment." Faculty and students have complained, but the
> network administrators state that this is needed in order to protect
> the network.
>
> I contacted Websense to find out if they have any other colleges or
> universities as current customers, but the sales rep I spoke to
> admitted that he didn't know of any. From the research I've done, it
> looks like a few colleges used Websense in the late 1990s and as late
> as 2002 (mostly in the UK), but I can't find any colleges presently
> using it.
>
> Does anyone know of any public institutions of higher education that
> block categories of websites? Does anyone have any first-hand
> experience of this at their college?
>
> Thanks,
> (Take out the numbers for my valid email
> address.)

I'm not aware of any colleges that are filtering their web traffic - it's
usually the opposite case, they leave their networks wide open.

Has your college considered using an alternative to websense? We use St.
Bernard iPrism and it works greats for a hub&spoke WAN configuration. For
your college, if they are really concerned about security without hindering
convenience to staff and students, they could go with BlueCoat. BlueCoat
merged with Ositis awhile back, and the combined solution now is a proxy
caching security appliance (which helps save on bandwidth and reduces
latency) and antivirus gateway. It will do any web filtering and tracking
they need, while also scanning all files for viruses/trojans - coming
through the common ports (http, ftp, smtp, pop3, irc, etc.).

It sounds like your college's filtering policy includes more than security
concerns. If they're blocking realplayer streams, then they're trying to
cut back on bandwidth usage, which is another nice thing about using proxy
caching.

Rick

Richard S. Westmoreland

I do it here ( without elaborating on where is here ), but
I only do it for specific labs where vandalism was so
high that the labs were effectively useless. What I did
eventually generated a request from department heads
to do it in grad student offices too ... where they were
finally fed up with ITS shutting off ports daily due to
virus traffic and systems not being updated. Rather than
block millions of sites, I use an "allow list" created by
setting up a dummy proxy in IE, and listing exceptions.
On top of that, I use gpedit to prevent desktop vandalism.
And then we run f-secure AV and firewall which allows
us to push rules to the desktops. Finally, backing up
all this is disk imaging. If a smarty figures out how to
vandalize, I re-image right over his homework. What
is interesting is once all of this was in place, and our lab
systems became stable and reliable so a student could
get a job done, the students stopped complaining totally.
I never hear a word about it anymore. For unrestricted
web access .. which is needed a little bit ... we have
PCs located at stand up stations in full view of everyone.
I only have to clean them up about once a month .. or
I can even ignore them with a big "I told you so!"
Grad students are mostly sacked ... GAIN, Gator, AIM,
Bargain Buddy, ... what a joke. I wonder what the
Chinese are doing with all those VISA numbers ??

johns

johns

Websense can be defeated rather easily, by simply using an http proxy.
As far as desktop vandalism, it might be easier to use a program such
as Deep Freeze, and simply have network folders that allow students to
save their files to a network drive, although your current way works
as well.

-ds

David Shaw

Thomas M. Heaney <> wrote:

> I work at a college that uses Websense to block and filter websites
> for reasons of security and bandwidth. Basically, this includes any
> multi-media sites or files (e.g. RealPlayer streams), any web-based
> email system, and just about anything that can remotely be defined as
> "entertainment." Faculty and students have complained, but the
> network administrators state that this is needed in order to protect
> the network.
>
> I contacted Websense to find out if they have any other colleges or
> universities as current customers, but the sales rep I spoke to
> admitted that he didn't know of any. From the research I've done, it
> looks like a few colleges used Websense in the late 1990s and as late
> as 2002 (mostly in the UK), but I can't find any colleges presently
> using it.
>
> Does anyone know of any public institutions of higher education that
> block categories of websites? Does anyone have any first-hand
> experience of this at their college?
>
> Thanks,
> (Take out the numbers for my valid email
> address.)

the collage i go to blocks porn sites etc, and think a few sercuirty
ones, ie ones that allow scanning of ports and such, they mostly rely on
blocking ports as far as i can see, ie you can surf but not get e mail
use ftp etc....this means most IM don't work though MSN does.

roger

Roger Merriman