Smoothwall Corporate Guardian

Smoothwall Corporate Guardian is a combined web proxy and content filter that runs on Linux. Installation is automated and management straightforward, making it very easy to deploy.

To install Guardian you'll need a dedicated PC with a recommended 1GHz processor, 96MB of memory and 2GB disk or greater. A single network connection is all that's needed, but as a proxy server some reconfiguration of client browsers may be required. A transparent proxy mode and the use of a supplied setup script minimises the work involved.

Installing the server is simple - just boot from the CD and it will format the hard disk, then install a security-hardened Linux kernel and load the Corporate Guardian software. The whole process took around 10 minutes in our labs, after which we were able to start filtering traffic with remaining configuration and management done remotely from a browser.

Filtering is done using a mix of subscription-based URL lists, updated weekly, and content analysis. The software can only analyse text, although it can be configured to strip out adverts and block file downloads. Another omission is the lack of any facility to scan files for viruses as they are downloaded.The URL lists can be added to and are easily customised and the software as a whole is quickly mastered. However, there are only limited facilities to apply security policies on a per user basis, using either a manually maintained internal user list or an unsupported third-party utility to communicate with external authentication servers.

With only basic logging facilities and no email or IM scanning, Guardian won't appeal to large companies. Its main strengths are ease and speed of deployment and it is worth a look by smaller businesses that want to control web access.

Contact: Smoothwall 0113 399 3292
www.smoothwall.co.uk