#K12 Mobile iOS Device Filtering

[david_yenzer]

What do you use for filtering your mobile devices? There was some discussion in Mike's Configurator session about Lightspeed, which we'll look into, but what other options are there?

[mbuckner]

All of our internet access at school is filtered by lightspeed. We are NOT filtering ipads at home. It isn't practical. The lightspeed mobile browser is junk. Plus, it will only be viable if you disable safari AND you don't install any other apps with a built-in web browser.

You could configure a global proxy if you are on iOS 6, but I don't have any experience with that.

[cgordy]

Our iPads do not go home.
They are filtered on our network by OpenDNS.

[John_Wetter]

Not a fan of Lightspeed... Our iPads are filtered with our standard content filtering on network which we keep minimal, and are not filtered at home. As part of the roll-out, we've explained this with their parents and gave them strategies for keeping tabs on their kids in the connected world.

[CasperSally]

Another 'not a fan of ilghtspeed' here - but all of the filtering products we test just aren't used to large mac deployments. Other products worth looking at - Edgewave's iPrism and iBoss.

[nsdjoe]

We don't have iPads going home. Within the district network, we're using iPrism. We're thinking of using the iOS 6 global proxy feature to filter web content if/when iPads do go home. If we do this, we may find a cloud based web filter solution rather than routing web traffic into the district and back out again.

[Litchenberg]

In Colorado we don't have a choice. If they go home they are filtered and the school district is required to have a policy dealing with it. Not a fan of Lightspeed either. I have a demo unit using global http proxy. The App store is now broken and the JSS is not able to update inventory or push notifications.

[david_yenzer]

I suspect we may not have a choice either, so will have to figure something out for a filter.

[emikesell]

My School uses iBoss, but I am looking at other options. I am a novice Mac Administrator and the iBoss filter is not a DMG or Package that you install. It is some scripts that you get from iBoss and then you have to edit and configure and package them. I am looking at Smoothwall. I just started today so I may have some more information on that product in the next couple days.

[derosa]

Take a look at BASCOM's AnyWhere Filter, http://www.bascom.com/solutions/anywhere-filter. We've done work to integrate with Casper Suite so you can do filtering based on Groups and usernames. I was one of the speakers during the "Utilizing the JSS API" presentation.

[CasperSally]

@emikesell - we looked at iBoss, and may do so again. I also couldn't wrap my brain around why they don't invest a few hours to build a mac installer versus having people in their modifying their scripts.

[richb]

We are getting rid of iPrism and are evaluating iBoss. They do have the global proxy capability but once a user is logged into their system they never seem to be logged out! They want us to use their MDM solution which costs additional per device but we are trying to work around that since we already have an MDM solution with Profile Manager.

[david_yenzer]

*bump* Any updates on iPad filtering?! We currently use Lightspeed and it sounds like we will have a test group of 60 that will be going home and will require coming back to our Lightspeed filter. So one way or the other we'll get some experience in it!

[CasperSally]

We are also getting rid of iPrism (support is terrible) and evaluating iBoss (for filtering computers though, not iOS remotely). Their mobile filter is different than their MDM product, but they're worth talking to to see what they do for mobile filtering of iOS.

[tobiaslinder]

We have successfully evaluated http://umbrella.com from OpenDNS and are planing to use it in several 1 to 1 deployments in the near future.

It works wherever the user is by tunneling all requests from the device to the nearest OpenDNS datacenter. Costs are between $ 25.- and 15.- per device/year depending on number of users.

[emikesell]

Update. My School District did purchase a Smoothwall web filter this year. We have had it up and running for the first three weeks of school. The Mobile Client does work pretty well and was very easy to deploy using casper. One of the great features that we are getting ready to deploy is quota limits to specific websites. This will limit how much time during a 24 hour period a user or group of users can access a website or a group of websites. Once they have used their quota time, they have to wait until the timer resets.

example, I can limit access to students to youtube for 30 mins a day. The timer is set to reset at 4 AM and the user gets a notification every 10 mins how time they have left while they are using that site.

If any one has any questions and would like to talk more about it please feel free to ask.

[AndyBeaver]

We having been using Lightspeed's Rocket appliance for off campus filtering of student iPads about a month now, so far so good. I will say their support site is really hard to find an answer on. Setup guides and downloads are completely buried. For what its worth.

[CasperSally]

I see my earlier post I mentioned Edgewave iPrism. I would now highly suggest staying away from them. We suffered through a year of terrible support. It appears they don't have many (any) iOS/Mac home filtering customers.

So far, happy with iBoss.

[nsdjoe]

We are also leaving Edgewave iPrism. Our network team is evaluating other filter options. We'll have to take a look at iBoss.

[nsdjoe]

Hey Sally,

We're just starting to use iBoss in our district. Have you found a good way to filter iPads using iBoss?

~Joe

[mcarasso]

Hey, Ive been using Smooth Wall running in my hypervisor for about 6 months as my global proxy and ever since ios 7 i've had crazy proxy authentication issues anyone have any tips or have any ideas of alternative.

[Emmert]

Does anyone have any experience with the global HTTP proxy and the iPrism content filter?

Any easy alternatives if that's not possible?

[CasperSally]

@Emmert - if you read this thread there are some hits about iPrism, at least 3 users who have left them. It's the worst support I've ever gotten from a company.

iBoss might be a better solution, though I admit I haven't done off site iOS deployments.

[jgrubbs]

We use Lightspeed with our iPads as well. Very happy with the Global Proxy through Casper. The profile can't be removed once the iPads have been added to DEP and Casper.