Solving Technical Safeguarding Problems

The following articles describe the detail, solutions, risks and problems associated with providing safe Internet access for children / pupils and students in a School and College environment or Internet access to other vulnerable or high risk individuals.
There are many technical solutions and controls that can be applied each of these issues, in order to have an effective solution, multiple technologies coupled with external intelligence are required either in the form of data feeds or log processing or both.

We try describe these, providing an overview of the problem, an understanding of the issues and possible solutions for non-technical and technical users alike with links to further trusted sources of information for more detail.
We also describe real world issues and circumventions of some of the controls and what can be done to mitigate those.

These are the most common and well known issues and areas of technology management we are asked about but this is far from an exhaustive list.

There are literally hundreds of applications and protocols available, paid for or free in “App Stores” or elsewhere, with in app purchases available.
These contain a variety of features and technologies utilised to bypass firewall and next generation firewall controls and allow users unrestricted Internet access.
These applications are often promoted and sold as privacy or security applications, but the reality is they are designed to circumvent firewall and content controls, bypass “geo based” content restrictions and prevent age related parental or organisational controls.
Often users will route traffic via third party countries that do not have an equivalent privacy framework or protection in place, allowing their traffic to be monitored, intercepted and possible have its integrity compromised.

Managing Domain Name System (DNS)
Managing Commercial VPN use
Managing Torrents
Managing Tor
Managing Proxy use.
Effective User identification on the Firewall
Effective Policies
Effective Firewall configuration
Managing organisational devices
Managing Personal devices (BYOD)


Technical Glossary