Internet Filters Protect Students When They Venture Beyond The School’s Web Domain

“To me, it’s amazing that they could still be operating that way,” he says.

Luckily, such schools represent a very small minority. Most technology professionals—in all fields—devote a disproportionate amount of time to fighting the spam, viruses and objectionable Web sites that drain their resources. In addition, the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000, which requires schools and libraries to block inappropriate content from minors, makes Web and e-mail filtering an even higher priority for K-12 schools.

“The challenge is getting your hands around the Internet, which is extremely daunting,” says Ben Startzer, executive director of technology at Mesa County Valley School District 51 in Grand Junction, Colo.

Daunting doesn’t begin to cover the immensity of the challenge. With an estimated 81,000 or more viruses in existence, spam making up as much as 65 percent of e-mail and the number of Web sites constantly doubling, words cannot adequately describe the problem. As a result, school IT professionals deploy an armory of strategies to keep inappropriate content off their networks. Redundant content filters, they say, play an essential role in keeping networks safe and under control.

Spam: Enemy No. 1

Because spam continually clogged the network at Mesa Valley, Startzer says, the school district implemented a strict policy this year: The district’s 20,000 students cannot send or receive e-mail outside its network of 41 buildings.

Spam also troubles Sexsmith. At Capistrano, a district that consists of 55 schools, 4,900 staff members and about 50,000 students from 11 communities, spam constitutes one-third of all e-mail. After installing a product that blocks peer-to-peer networking and filters e-mail, Sexsmith analyzed one day’s e-mail coming into the network. Of the 10,594 e-mails received, one-third—3,486 messages—were spam, and 40 percent of the spam carried some form of virus. That’s nearly 1,400 potential threats to IT security.

The problem is that most spam tools are reactionary: They tend to look for characteristics that identify spam. However, spammers are constantly finding new ways to thwart the filters. “For every fix we put out to safeguard our kids, there’s an alternate to that fix,” says Startzer.

Virus and Web Filtering

In addition to fighting spam, many districts are also looking at better ways to limit student access to inappropriate Internet content.

When Mesa Valley first started Web filtering, the district used the basic filter provided by its Internet service provider. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for students to get around it. For example, to evade the filter, students would visit sites that let users access other Web sites anonymously, Startzer explains.

In June, Mesa Valley upgraded to stronger Web filtering software that regularly tracks sites that cloak identity and adds them to its blacklists. In addition, the district has created its own blacklists, which include sites that appear on lists designed specifically for schools. The district also blocks entire categories—topics such as gambling, pornography and violent-themed sites, Startzer says.

A few months before it installed the new Web filter, the Mesa County Valley district also upgraded its antivirus software. Now, instead of merely identifying and cleaning infected files, the antivirus software pinpoints which machine is spreading the virus.

Yet, Startzer notes, content filtering is a long battle that isn’t likely to end anytime soon. “It will be a priority for us for years to come,” he says. “We’re willing to fight the fight.”