Christ’s School Installs Bloxx Web Filtering to take Control of Web Access

“I liked the fact that Bloxx is a self-contained, reliable solution with a great, easy-to-use web interface that lets me take immediate control. The benefits of Bloxx to our School have definitely outweighed the costs immeasurably – compared to our previous solution Bloxx is fantastic!”

Barry Donovan, Network Manager, Christ’s School

School Background

With roots back to 1658, Christ’s School in Richmond upon Thames is committed to the pursuit of educational excellence and offers a rich and varied curriculum. It uses technology to support and enhance learning to get the full potential out of its students.

The Challenge

Christ’s had previously used web filtering that was centrally managed through its London borough council, which made it difficult for the School to have any level of control over its filtering policy.

The School wanted to have more control over user groups and individual access to the web and wanted much more thorough reporting capabilities. The IT team could not create and schedule reports directly – these had to be requested from the council. This was time consuming and delayed action on any abuse of the Internet within the school. The School also wanted to have the ability to immediately ban users from the Internet when appropriate.

The Solution

To gain more control, Christ’s brought its web filtering management in-house and out of the borough’s control, to get more flexible and proactive control of its Internet Access Policy.

After evaluating a number of different web filters, the School selected the Bloxx web filtering appliance to control Internet access for the 650 users across the school.

The Bloxx web filtering appliance uses Tru-View Technology to identify and block web pages in real-time, protecting students and staff to the highest level.

Combined with easy-to-use reporting and management tools, IM, P2P and file-download management, enforced SafeSearch and anti-malware tools – all as standard – Bloxx offers advanced user and network protection, as well as value-for-money.

The Results

Christ’s School is now able to promote a flexible Internet policy that is tailored to the individual study needs of the students.
Barry Donovan, Network Manager at Christ’s School, comments on the Bloxx purchase: “I liked the fact that Bloxx is a self-contained, reliable solution with a great, easy-to-use web interface that lets me take immediate control. Plus, you get easy and simple updates combined with the added benefits of antivirus and spyware detection.”

Bringing Bloxx into the school has significantly improved the way Internet access is managed. On-demand reporting is now available to Donovan at a click of a button.

“The reports are all scheduled automatically and we no longer need to rely on external resources to give us information about our own web filtering issues, saving me a lot of time and making this part of my job a lot easier.”

“We consult some reports daily and others at the end of every term and information about levels of student access, popular websites, etc is disseminated to senior management. Other matters that arise through the reports, for instance, attempted access to suicide orientated sites, is handled more delicately.”

Through the information and patterns of access held in reports, Donovan has refined the school’s Internet policy.

“The reports showed us that social networking was a big problem in the school, so we were able to stop access to this type of site during teaching hours.”

“The reports also highlighted the problem of students attempting to bypass the filter through anonymous proxies. The previous web filter was simply unable to keep up with the level and number of proxy sites being created and consequently accessed every day. When we installed Bloxx, this problem was practically eliminated as it can spot and block anonymous proxies as soon as students attempt to access them. We have to keep up with the kids,” comments Donovan.

The Bloxx appliance lets you create different groups of users with varying levels of access, which Donovan finds a great benefit.

“It’s fantastic that we can provide flexible Internet access for the students and staff, with different policies for different groups of users and at different times of the day.”

“For example Year 11 students get more access than the younger years and we allow access to different sites depending on the particular subject. Sometimes certain groups of students need access to sites that would normally be blocked for a particular project or coursework. This freedom to provide limited access when needed is very useful.”

On the issue of productivity within the school, Donovan says:

“Staff and student productivity has undoubtedly improved. Now staff are aware that certain sites can only be accessed in non-work time. Student productivity has improved dramatically – they know that will have access to more sites at lunchtime and other break times, so they now focus on learning rather than personal surfing. It has also made the teachers’ job easier since they no longer need to constantly monitor which sites the students are visiting.

“The benefits of Bloxx to our school have definitely outweighed the costs immeasurably – compared to our previous solution Bloxx is fantastic!” concludes Donovan.