John, Here's how we "handle" the situation. We have an internal Netscape Proxy server and entered a subscription with Secure Computing's (www.securecomputing.com) SmartFilter product. The product runs on Netscape and Microsoft Proxy, NT and Unix. The software was cheap and the subscription is cheaper. All clients point their browsers to the proxy server and the firewall is instructed to allow only http access from the proxy server. SmartFilter categorizes a site based on web page content (Sex, Hate, Criminal, Job Search, Chat, etc.). I can block an entire category. Should one of my users "accidentally" (of course) hit a blocked site, I've customized the error message (a simple process as well) to report why the site was blocked and who to call should the site not be blocked. Oh yes, unblocking a site is fairly simple as well. "Fairly" only because to modify the blocking rules, while only editting a text file, requires stopping/starting the proxy services to become effective. Not only can a site be unblocked, but it can be blocked as well ... Open up the sports category, but block the home site of your rival NFL team *grin*. Blocking/Unblocking can be performed at a URL level all the way down to a specific page. Secure Computing updates their categorization list once a week. Unfortunately with NT, there is no supplied way to Cron the ftp download, unless I go get some other software and write the scripts. For me, the 5 minutes to download and put into place the new category files once a week is no biggie. Secure Computing blocks by dotted decimal notation as well as URL. Sorry to be wordy, if you have any other questions, feel free to email or call. Doug Doug Robinson Sr. Systems Engineer, Network Communications Jo-Ann Stores, Inc. 5555 Darrow Road Hudson, Ohio 44236 USA Voice: (330) 656-2600 ext. 2785 Fax: (330) 463-6677 EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe firewalls" in the body of the message.]
