Introduction | Email and Diary | Security and Control | Features | Flexibility | Reliability
Brochure (PDF)Security and Control
 | |  | |  | | A network needs to be built on a firm foundation. Security should be fundamental to your network design, not an afterthought. You need to know that you are not open to viruses or malicious attacks (both internal and external). On the other hand, like a good bodyguard, security should not be intrusive. | | |  |  |  |
Web proxy
A web proxy sits between your client computers and the Internet,
fetching web pages on their behalf. A cache is usually incorporated
which means that pages that have been viewed once are stored on
the server. This means that viewing the page a second time (on
any client computer) is much quicker. This is particularly useful in
schools where multiple pupils may be viewing the same web
pages. Even a fast broadband connection is an order of magnitude
slower than your local network.
Having a local proxy also allows you to filter access to websites.
Even if your ISP provides filtered web access, it is often very useful
to block extra websites (such as Hotmail). You may use
automatically updated lists of blocked sites which are sorted by
category (e.g. sex, violence, illegal software). In addition to the
automated lists, the NetManager offers you fine-grained control
over web access. For example, you could configure the
library computers so that they can only access the BBC website
between 12 and 2pm. You may set filters for different users,
groups, computers, time of day, filenames and, of course, websites.
These can be combined in numerous ways to form whitelists and
blacklists. All configuration is web-based.
All web accesses via the proxy are logged and the logs are
available through a web-based interface. The logs are fully
searchable by time, computer, text and username.
Firewalling
The NetManager offers full kernel-level firewalling. This means you
can clearly define which computers (both internally and externally)
can or cannot have access to certain resources. Also, you may not
have enough IP addresses to connect up all your computers. When
fitted with extra Ethernet cards, the NetManager can be used to
both protect your internal network and provide transparent yet
secure Internet access. In addition, even if the NetManager is the
only computer directly connected to the Internet, port redirection
allows other computers to be accessed from the outside (e.g. a
Citrix Metaframe server).
Precedence Technologies Ltd, Technology House, 36a Union Lane, Cambridge, UK | Tel: 08456 446 800
Revision:1.1 Thu Jan 19 12:03:43 2012 |
