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Entensys, a leading expert and developer in Internet security, announces the release of UserGate Web Filter.
Internet filtering is on the minds of many administrators and is mandated by law in many countries. Effective protection from inappropriate content is critical at schools, government agencies, and companies; it is also a key option that Internet providers must offer their users.
UserGate Web Filter is a gateway solution for controlling Internet use on all devices on a local or provider network, regardless of device type or operating system, and configuring web access. By deploying the product, administrators make Internet access safe and minimize non-productive web surfing. The software combines five filtering mechanisms in a single package: category-based blocking, morphological analysis, safe search, white lists and black lists, and blocking of banners and pop-ups.
UserGate Web Filter is the successor to GateWall DNS Filter, which was released in 2010. The new product supplements filtering of DNS requests with content analysis and a number of other features, including filtering of direct IP address requests. UserGate Web Filter supports Linux and can be installed on physical and virtual machines; it can be deployed as a high-performance cluster solution for filtering dozens or even hundreds of thousands of users.
A database of over 500 million URLs is used by UserGate Web Filter, allowing administrators to allow or block access to entire URL categories. In addition, morphological analysis analyzes web pages for key words, phrases, or regular expressions. This approach allows selectively blocking site sections, instead of blocking at the domain level. This capability is extremely useful on social networks and other portals with large amounts of user-generated content (Web 2.0).
The safe search feature forces use of “safe search” mode on popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and on YouTube. Results for video and image searches are filtered with an exceptional degree of accuracy. UserGate Web Filter can also block advertising banners, which often contain objectionable words and images.
UserGate Web Filter supports white lists and black lists of URLs. These lists take precedence over other product settings for fine-grained control.
UserGate Web Filter is available in three forms:
- UserGate Web Filter as a stand-alone program for servers (the current version is for Linux, with a Windows version in development)
- UserGate Web Filter Appliance, a hardware device with included filtering software
- UserGate Web Filter Virtual Appliance image, for deploying the product on a virtual machine
"UserGate Web Filter has been created in response to the real-world needs and wants of major ISPs and schools. That is why we are so sure of its widespread adoption,” predicted Dmitry Kurashev, Entensys CEO. “Our software offers a number of new technologies that make filtering exceptionally precise and complete, while maintaining high performance and scalability."