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School District Gives Linux Security Technology High Grades: Page 3 of 4

The Astaro Security Linux offers a solution to this problem. Technology licensed by Cobion provides content filtering bundled into the base product. Cobion's data center analyzes 120 million new websites every month and publishes 100,000 updates daily, pushing these updates directly to the firewall. Each Astaro security appliance automatically runs its surfing requests against its content filters through a URL cache, assuring that only legitimate traffic gets through. In other words, the filtering database is dynamic, adapting to the changing Internet, rather than simply relying on a static pool of keywords and URLs.

With some help, I adjusted the URL filtering categories so that each school district could have its own content filtering profile. Initially, the product was catching more than what some school districts wanted. All school systems decided to filter pornography; so no one can bypass the Pike Peak BOCES' security, but the schools differed when it came to sites with potentially violent content.

For instance, some of the schools with martial arts classes wanted to allow weapons sites to get through, relying on the adult supervision of students as the ultimate filter. For example, if a marital arts site that sells knives and uniforms is blocked because it sells knives, then the students wouldn't be able to order their martial arts uniforms. If a school doesn't have the ability to provide close supervision but still wants certain content to be available, Astaro provides a "whitelist" capability so that select websites within a blocked category can be allowed through.

Once inappropriate content is blocked, what then do you do with the deluge of unwanted content? While filters protect students from pornography and violence, most do not handle the endless stream of unwanted spam that bombards email addresses.

Cobion also provides a global spam database of 15 million analyzed entries in 58 categories, which enables the firewall to dam the flood of unwanted spam.