We parse posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Presenting these posts along with audit data in a searchable format allows school leadership to oversee students' Social Media activity while balancing e-safety with freedom.
Santa Clara, CA (PRWEB) August 04, 2014
Securly, Inc. – the world's leading cloud-based provider of Internet Security for K-12 schools – today announced features that would make the most popular Social Networking websites a "walled garden" for student use. Facebook, Google+ and Twitter have become de facto hangouts for children in their teens. They have also become prominent attack vectors for cyber-bullies and sexual predators.
As more schools go 1:1 with Chromebooks and other devices, sending the device home with the student is a choice that is often made. The most common policy with schools is to keep Social Networking sites blocked when students are in-school. As the device goes home, schools are confronted with three alternatives:
- Leave the device unfiltered: The CIPA law does not make any mention of filtering devices at home. Schools that choose to do so go down that route do so in response to the needs of the parent community.
- Filter the device and provide a different policy at home: Securly pioneered the concept of "relaxed take-home policies". While Facebook and Twitter remain blocked in school, IT Admins have the option of giving students access to these sites at home to give them a greater sense of freedom while using their devices.
- Block Social Networking at home: Shields schools from potential liability that could arise from cyber-bullying and other related incidents.
One extreme leaves Social Networking websites completely unfiltered. The other extreme gives little freedom for children to spend time in online communities that anchor their social lives. Today's announcement from Securly represents the first significant attempt to strike a balanced middle ground. Says Securly CEO Vinay Mahadik: "We parse posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Presenting these posts along with audit data in a searchable format allows school leadership to oversee students' Social Media activity while balancing e-safety with freedom."
Securly is able to present this data across all platforms including Windows, MacBooks, Chromebooks and iPads. While extensions on Chromebooks make this a relatively easy problem to solve, it is not the case for other devices which require "in the cloud" traffic inspection. The fact that traffic from these sites is encrypted makes it even harder. Securly uses a combination of SSL decryption and in-the-cloud network protocol parsing to achieve a truly unified solution that works across all devices.
For more information, please visit http://blog.securly.com/2014/08/04/dns2everything-social-texting-tweeting-monitor/.
About Securly:
Securly is the world's leading provider of cloud-based analytics and security for K-12 schools. The founding team has a combined 20+ years of experience in the network security space. The company is a venture backed startup in Silicon Valley and serves hundreds of schools in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.