Advanced IT Security in Education Bloxx at BETT 2006

Bloxx Ltd will be attending this years BETT show, the worlds leading event for educational technology, at Londons Olympia on January 11th 14th 2006.

With over 600 exhibitors, BETT showcases products and services relevant to all areas of education, from the young pupils to adult learners, and allows education professionals to evaluate and purchase many different ICT products and services. Bloxx are an IT security company who provide a three tier web filtering appliance and will be demonstrating the benefits that their technology offers the education sector at BETT.

Effective web filtering a URL database is not enough

The schools sector was one of the first to recognise the benefits of filtered web access. For many, the sole means of effectively controlling inappropriate web usage is by checking web address requests against a large database of web sites. The original theory was that the bigger your suppliers database, the more efficient your web filtering software.  However, this approach ignores that the internet is dynamic. New and renamed sites are launched daily - which means that whatever the resource a software company invests in a database only solution, it can never be up to date and unpleasant material will still reach the desktop.

Technology can now deliver much more than a library of historical web sites. Second generation web filtering companies like Bloxx now dynamically review web pages as they are requested (taking advantage of high speed appliances to avoid any performance issues). The idea is that by scoring the HTML pages before they reach the desktop (rather like a film rating), a web site can be blocked from reaching a user even if it has never previously been identified as inappropriate. By applying thresholds, you can adjust the appropriateness of material based on age, course, etc.

Liberate your IT Spend

With the arrival of alternative, second generation web filtering products and their availability on secure appliances such as Bloxx appliances, everyone whether you purchase directly or pay managed service fees ought to be taking advantage of the growing number of firms offering appliance based pricing rather than the pioneer cost per user approach. This provides lower costs of ownership in particular to larger network users and youll not need to worry about adding users, licences etc. The removal of the nasty cost per user pricing model (not just for web filtering, but for anti virus, anti spam, etc too) provides the first opportunity for the education sector to free up vast tracts of IT budget currently locked into annual licence charges and release these funds for improving IT infrastructure within our educational environments.

This advanced technology, which provides the maximum amount of protection, essential for students, will be demonstrated at the BETT show by Bloxx. Paul Irvine, Sales and Marketing Director of Bloxx, says attending BETT gives educational professionals the chance to see how our next generation filtering appliance can help protect students from inappropriate material on the Internet. This is important in order to maximise their potential and prevent negative ramifications, such as the legal liability issues tied to Internet use. Bloxx will be attending BETT between 11th- 14th January 2006 (10am-6pm, Sat 10am-4pm).