Content Screening

Sessionwall has been selected and is being used by a broad range of schools and school district's across the United States and Canada. These educators are using SessionWall's content screening to help them protect themselves and their students from inappropriate network access and inappropriate email.

Based on policies established by the school, Sessionwall examines all session packets that pass by on the local area network. When a session violates an established policy, Sessionwall relates the violation to the specific user, the site accessed, the specific protocols used, the specific usernames used, the information sent and received, and the specific keywords contained within the data portion of the packets being sent. This information can then be logged and used to terminate the session and/or alert the proper administrator.

Additionally, some schools are using Sessionwall's content screening to also monitor email content in order to protect the school network from inappropriate language and hate email. Sessionwall has been used on numerous occasions to identify the source of sexually explicit emails to other students and teachers. Sessionwall was able to help identify several students who thought that they had successfully used another person's user id. Sessionwall identified the real source PC and with a little research the culprits were identified.

In other instances the schools invoke access controls and use Sessionwall's content screening to not only track usage but also to block inappropriate website access and inappropriate email communications. Sessionwall includes more than categorized 200,000 URLs, supports RSACi site identification, and allows for sensitive word detection in web accesses and emails.

Specific applications include using Sessionwall to determine which Internet sites their students are visiting and with whom they are exchanging emails. This provides the school administrators with the information they need to respond with definitive answers to board and parent-teacher group inquiries. It also allows teachers to be aware of misuse or abuse and take the appropriate corrective action in advance of serious problems.

In some cases the primary user is the school librarian. Internet access is often available to students through one or more PCs in the library. The librarians are charged with the responsibility of monitoring student use of these PCs. Sessionwall not only prepares reports of student usage, through content screening it also can also prepare reports of the research sites that students are visiting and the actual material that is received.

The most frequently given reasons for the selection of Sessionwall by schools are:

	Ease of Installation - Many schools have reported that it has taken less than 5 minutes to install Sessionwall without any network or configuration changes.
	Ease of Use - Since there are no network skills required to either install or use Sessionwall, the majority of respondents are impressed with the ease of use.
	Immediacy of Tangible Results - From installation, it takes 15 minutes to be operational and providing easy to read reports that identify the websites visited, arranged by category (e.g., sexual content, hate speech, drug sites, etc.) and the students and other users accessing these sites.