Smoothwall web filtering services

The Schools' Internet Service includes a managed firewall and Smoothwall web filtering service. The Smoothwall filtering service is designed to facilitate the effective provisioning of safeguarding in a school environment and meets legal mandates set out under the Prevent Duty and Keeping Children Safe Online.

While centrally managed and updated, the service also enables schools to block sites that they deem inappropriate using age and user groups. Schools can then generate activity reports from their Smoothwall portal. The solution defines and applies filtering policies to the following user groups:

  • Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 students
  • Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students
  • Key Stage 5 and Post 16 students
  • Teaching staff
  • Office administration staff

Depending on the school’s IT environment it is possible to deploy these new settings using Active Directory Group Policies.

Frequently asked questions

Schools can choose which websites or categories they wish to allow. You can find details of how to administer your school’s internet usage policy below.

Guide on how to:

A SSL certificate needs to be installed on any device accessing the internet using Smoothwall. This is needed as Smoothwall inspects secure web content to make sure it is appropriate.

The Smoothwall certificate and installation instructions can be accessed from the links below:

The Smoothwall filtering solution offers two methods to configure devices for Internet access. The first is by configuring implicit proxy server and port settings on each device, and the other is by installing the Smoothwall IDEX client.

Read more about Smoothwall device configuration here (PDF, 120KB).

Click or tap here to access the Smoothwall portal.

The proxy server exception of 10.*;*.gfl.suffolk.org.uk will need to be configured on any devices that will be used to administer the Smoothwall portal.

A transparent proxy is when you do not need to manually configure proxy settings on the browser or computer. In this situation all traffic is seen by the proxy automatically as it is placed between the school and the internet.

A transparent proxy solution needs a bespoke integration with each school to ensure users receive the correct level of filtering i.e. ensure younger students receive key stage 1 filter applied.

The Suffolk Cloud network supports a mixture of schools, some who use Smoothwall and some who have their own filtering solution. Some schools prefer to control filtering by setting a port as they do not want to integrate Smoothwall with Active Directory.

Because of this it has not been possible to implement a central transparent proxy solution.

Smoothwall

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