Technology Headlines
Digital School's DS Secure
Digital Schools — Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Digital School's DS Secure Introduces Advanced Web Filter and Accelerator to K-12 Schools; New Features Enhance Security and Access to Safe Sites
Junde 26, 2012 - DS Secure, a networking and communications application offered by Digital Schools™ and designed by Atom AMPD, LLC, introduces Advanced Web Filter and Accelerator to its highly integrated multi-functional software. With the new application, DS Secure can more effectively support the Network, Security and Communication needs of K-12 schools nationwide. In one platform, DS Secure offers multiple information technology solutions at significant cost savings to school districts.
"DS Secure's security solutions cost-effectively address threats and challenges with simple, centralized management; optimal network performance; and dramatic cost savings when compared to traditional solutions," said Chris Beyne, Atom AMPD's Director of Business Development and their Product Manager for Digital Schools DS Secure. "Administrators particularly value the fact that DS Secure's new Web Filter and Accelerator make it easier to precisely regulate access to multiple categories of web domains and URLs. It also enforces the "safe search" filtering built into most search engines so that their full capabilities, such as image search, can be used safely," added Beyne.
Beyne pointed out that from a security standpoint, the domain and URL block lists are updated daily and contain 23 categories that can be blocked or allowed individually. Additionally DS Secure's antivirus filtering with ClamAV protects users from Trojans, viruses, malware and other malicious threats on the web.
DS Secure's Web Filter and Accelerator includes advanced capability to scan and filter SSL secured web traffic. "The very nature of SSL web traffic means that enforcing web and content filtering is a unique challenge," says Peter Fry, CTO of Atom AMPD. "So we developed software that monitors DNS requests ensuring that when a blocked domain name is looked up, layer 3 traffic to the domain's IP addresses is immediately blocked;.
DS Secure's Web Filter makes an out-of-band request to the same site to obtain its secure certificate, and only sites that are validated by a trusted authority (such as Thawte or GoDaddy) are allowed. This approach eliminates much of the threat from rogue SSL proxies that are designed to bypass web filtering technology. In addition, DS Secure's Web Filter employs automatic proxy detection in order to discover and block new proxies in real time.
"YouTube for Schools is an invaluable resource for educators, serving as a portal to a wide array of high quality educational videos. DS Secure now offers safe access to YouTube for Schools, by automatically redirecting all YouTube requests to a YouTube for Schools portal," added Beyne.
For more information, please contact Digital Schools at 888.939.7799 for the DS Secure Representative in your area or info@digital-schools.com.
