Sorry this is long, but thought you might want to know my opinion of the
product.
--------------------------
Here is my brief review of the CIPA filter (www.cipafilter.com).
We have been running it for around 1 week. I will talk a little about the
different areas.
1. Content filter - it is a good filter at stopping porn sites. I think it
lacks a little in stopping other things. Today they have made a change so I
can block flash from running for the students and they also have put in so we
can block web-based email (we don't allow students to email from school). IF
you want to allow the site the whitelist and block a site blacklist are easy to
use. It also will block web-based proxies. One of the best features is that
it makes the students use google safe search for images.
On a scale of 1-10 I will give it a 8 in content blocking.
2. Firewall feature - This is pretty standard and tech support helped me move
over all of the blocks, etc that we needed to add. 1-10 rating I will give it
a 9.
3. Port forwarding - Another straight forward feature and I will give it a 9.
4. Email proxy/server - pretty easy to set stuff up in this, they have a
ant-spam whitelist that I just took my whitelist from declude and added them to
it.
5. Spam blocking - they have just added a feature to the spam blocking. Each
email the system thinks is spam but is not sure will add a spam number to it.
The newest feature is that we can select what level of number we want to delete
and what level will go thru. I have been watching my declude logs and I have
not found any emails that have this attached to it that are not spam. I am
going to set it at a number like 6 (the lower the number, the less likely it is
spam). When we first turned on the spam feature it wasn't catching much, their
lead programmer said some spammers have changed how they are spamming and it
takes CIPA filter a couple of days to work thru it. It has gotten better. I
don't believe it catches 90% like they are saying but probably more like 75-85%
I will give it a rating of 8.5
6. Download blocker - easy, we just set it so students can't download any exe
files, zip files, etc. works great - 9.
Finally the reporting engine.
They have a bandwidth reporting tool that allows me to see daily, weekly,
monthly usage and it breaks it down for each computer and the network as a
whole. I wish it would automatically refresh but if I select f5 it will then
refresh. I give it a 9.
We can also track where each student (because we are using active directory)
and each computer are going on the web. The report can be for today, 7 days,
month, etc. It will also show if they have tripped the content filter and what
site it was. Finally it gives me a list of the most viewed internet sites that
I can look over. I give this a 9.
I am not using the email archive feature.
Anti-spam statistics is a simple page that just shows you some basic numbers
about what we are receiving. This area they need some improvement on and they
are working on that. I give it a 5.
Anti-virus log is simple, it just shows when a virus has tried to get in, what
the virus was. Pretty simple but it works. I give it a 9.
Finally comments:
I am testing the beta version of their anti-virus engine, easy to install and
run. I just installed it yesterday so I don't have much to comment on it at
this time. They are making some major improvements to it this summer and are
adding some features using VNC.
Their tech support is the best I have ever worked with from any company. I
have been assigned one tech guy with a another person overseeing him. He is
outstanding. The lead designer has been outstanding at taking my suggestions
and trying to incorporate them or at least explaining why they can't do
something. Install was very easy, it took us around 2 1/2 hours to do it over
the phone with their tech person and we only had some small issues.
If you are looking for a no hassle firewall, gateway scanner, anti-spam, etc.
I think this would be a great machine to use. It is easy to work with and
configure and easy to use. I really like the product. Initial cost is around
$4700 for all of the features. They will maintain and update the box. If we
have a issue with the box, I have saved my configuration and within 24 hours
they will have a new box to me to upload my config to. After the first year
the cost for my 200 machines is $1695 which includes everything even the
workstation anti-virus. This price will never go up and is locked in for me.
The big question is will I stay with it - tommorrow craig and I are going to
compare it side by side with the lightspeed system. I am leaning towards
keeping Cipafilter because of the ease of use, tech support and longterm cost.
I think the lightspeed system is better for larger districts. If I had around
400-500+ computers, I would definately go with the light speed system. Keep in
mind with the lightspeed system that you need a pretty beefy server, you need
to have a lic of SQL. With the Cipafilter they just send you a box.
Craig and I will make a decision by next tuesday on which system we go with.
Thanks,
Jon W. Hueser
Assistant Principal
Curriculum/Technology Director
East Greene Comm. Schools
405 12th Str. South
Box 377
Grand Junction, IA 50107
Phone: 515-738-2411 ext. 241
Fax: 515-738-5719
Website: www.east-greene.k12.ia.us
________________________________________________________________
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