SAN JOSE, Calif., July 23, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Securly Inc, the thought leader in providing comprehensive student safety solutions for the K-12 market, announced today the release of SmartPAC, an innovative, patent-pending technology that achieves endpoint filtering without need for software agents or on-premise hardware appliances.
Previously, Securly's use of selective DNS to proxy technology permitted the company to report only sites that were directly relevant for K-12 interests, like educational sites and sites required to be filtered for CIPA compliance. Reporting and logging all websites, including finance, shipping websites etc. that are irrelevant to schools, would have either required DNS to proxy everything and make the service prohibitively expensive, or the use of an endpoint software agent or on-premise local appliance.
SmartPAC allows Securly to do this kind of advanced reporting without a need for agents or hardware. SmartPAC achieves this by using PAC files, which are Javascript files written in a standardized format that all modern browsers across all popular platforms understand. These files share the URL, user identity, and other local information, like endpoint IP address, with Securly's DNS infrastructure via DNS API calls from within the PAC file. The PAC files filter managed devices while unmanaged school devices such as Smart TVs, BYOD, and Guest Network devices hit the DNS infrastructure and receive the same customizable, CIPA-compliant policy as before.
"Having native software agents built for each platform is an approach that has been attempted and failed many times in the past decade for a few reasons: the complexity for the filtering vendoring of managing disparate code bases across various operating systems, versions, and individual patch levels, the hassle for district IT to require different agents for various managed platforms, and the inconvenience for district IT to need agents for managed devices alongside per-site appliances or single policy DNS based filtering for unmanaged devices. SmartPAC produces a single unified client that works the same way on every device, using PACs in a way never before imagined," says David Hinkle, Senior Architect for Scale and Performance.
Says co-founder and CEO Vinay Mahadik, "By integrating industry standard PAC technology with the power of Securly's unique DNS filtering and selective proxying infrastructure, we get individual level dynamic policy enforcement with none of the native baggage. One client to learn, one client to deploy, one client to manage."
About Securly
Securly is a Silicon Valley-based student safety company that provides Edtech safety solutions. The only company to cater exclusively to K-12, student safety has been Securly's mission since the very beginning. Currently, over 7M students use Securly's free and paid filtering solutions worldwide, and thousands of districts use Auditor, Securly's AI-based tool for cyberbullying and self-harm detection on Gmail. In addition to Filter and Auditor, Securly has expanded their product suite to include Parent Portal, 24, Plug n' Play Hub, and many more.
For more information, visit http://www.securly.com.
SOURCE Securly
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