i have a client with 18 stores and he wants to be able to block websites that employees visit using a software. any recommendations?
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By 18 stores do you mean retail stores.. so 18 different locations?
Do they all feed through one ISP or server?
The easiest thing to do would be to install a proxy server.
http://en.wikipedia
Then you could use a Content-filtering web proxy otherwise you'd have to install software on each client or on the server or firewall anyway.
http://en.wikipedia
This depends a lot on what equipment you have installed and how much you want to spend and how extensive you want the blocking to be. There are quite a few ways to get this done.
Here are just a few ideas off the top of my head:
1) setup a network proxy and force its use by only allowing the proxy outbound to the internet. The proxy can then control access, block sites, generate usage reports, etc. There are a bunch of proxy servers out there with various options.
2) if you are a cisco shop, the ASA firewall can use ip filters like websense to control outbound access. This one is pricey, but works very well...
3) If you need this on the cheap, you can use a hosts file to restrict access to certain sites. It's installed on each PC and you must lock it down so end users can't modify it. http://www.mvps.org/winhel
4) If its a common firewall, and you know the sites you want to block, you can restrict the destination IP addresses of the site. This one is very manual.
I forgot.. Lifehacker has some reviews on content filtering software:
http://lifehacker.com/5312
I would suggest a hardware firewall solution for each of the 18 locations, this would create the possibility of using the hardware to create one large VPN and a secure environment for PCI, HIPPA and other compliance regulations. I rwould then route all browsing through one of the boxes and filter on that. This sounds the most costly but is probally the easiest to setup and configure as well the most compliant with all the government BS.
I dont think you will find a total software solution if you are using hardware firewalls as you will still need a hardware box of some kind inserting into the loop. I am making the following assumption: Each remote location store is independent in respect to their internet.
I would recommend looking at an internet filtering appliance such as http://www.smoothwall.net/
If all internet traffic is run back to a central location then you will simply need a beefier single box doing the same as the above otherwise you will need one box per store (if each store has independent internet access).
one of the guys in a user group I participate in said St. Bernard Software in San Diego is the solution you need - he said to have you look into iPrismon solution called iguard.
http://www.stbernard.com/p
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by: namolPosted on 2009-11-02 at 10:12:32ID: 25721899
Buy a turn key solution such as a barracuda webfilter. That or you can roll your own proxy with squid/squidguard or use untangle. Deploy it either in line or force all the web browsers to use the machine as a proxy.