* Network Composer from Cymphonix Corporation
Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA seem to grab all the headlines as legislative mandates force changes in IT operations. But unless you have school-age children, or you are an IT administrator for a school district or library, you might not be aware of the IT demands legislated by the Federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) issued in December 2000. CIPA dictates that schools and libraries that receive federal funding (i.e., pretty much all public institutions) must implement policies and technology measures to block or filter access to inappropriate content such as pornography and other materials considered harmful to minors. To comply with the mandate, school districts all across the country scurried to implement URL blocking and content filtering.
Such was the case at Patchogue-Medford School District in the Long Island area of New York State. IT administrators at “Pat-Med” installed first one filtering appliance, and then another. Pat-Med is now on its third iteration of URL/content filtering product, and they have finally found one they like.
Scott Warmbrand is the computer systems administrator in the Office of Information Technology for the school district. Warmbrand says the district tried several enterprise-level secure Web gateway products for the filtering function, and he recalls those times as “a bad experience all the way around.” The products were simply too complex and too expensive for his district’s needs. Since then, he has installed Network Composer from Cymphonix Corporation, and he says this product “does the job we need it to do.”
I previously wrote about Cymphonix in March 2006, and since then, the company has found its niche in the crowded secure Web gateway market. Cymphonix has set its sights on the under-served SMB and educational markets. The company’s Network Composer appliance has most of the same features as offered by competitors like Blue Coat Systems, Websense and IronPort Systems, but at a price point and with a user interface that is more pleasing to organizations like Warmbrand’s. (For example, compare the Websense cost of $25,000 per year to Cymphonix’s cost of $23,000 for three years.)
“Cymphonix offers an ‘ease of management’ that we didn’t find with other filtering products,” says Warmbrand. “The school district doesn’t have very many technicians to oversee all the technology we have, so we needed a product that is very easy to use.”
Warmbrand said he worked previously with two popular enterprise gateway tools, and both of them were too complicated for his environment. He spent time daily administering the settings on these products, compared to the few hours a month he now devotes to the Cymphonix appliance.
It’s all in the GUI, according to Warmbrand. “The Cymphonix unit is very easy to install and learn compared to the others. Ease of use makes a big impact for my district. All the features we need to use are right there. Nothing’s hidden.”
Warmbrand likes that he can watch application monitoring graphically. “I can see the bandwidth each application is using in a graphical way,” he says. “Our firewall displays this information in code and it’s just too hard to see what’s going on.” This makes it easier to allocate bandwidth to specific applications or people. For example, he might allow a music teacher to access streaming media over the Internet, but this would be a low priority application for other users.
He goes into the classrooms and computer labs to see how students and teachers are using their Internet access. This helps him tune the policies that govern how the Cymphonix appliance works.
Even with 8700 students, 600 teachers and 2500 computers spread across 12 schools and administrative buildings, Warmbrand feels confident they are meeting the needs of the students and teachers while complying with the CIPA mandate.
Alan Wittstein is president of CONNECT Computer, a VAR that specializes in the SMB and education markets. Wittstein says his clients like the Cymphonix gateway product because they can work with just one tool to control, manage and report on what’s happening on the network. “We used to sell some of the high-end point solution products,” says Wittstein. “Then we discovered that our customers can have all the functionality they need in a single appliance and lower price point with Cymphonix. Whether they need bandwidth management, application control, IM logging or content filtering, they don’t have to buy individual products to fill the need.”
For more information about secure Web gateways, read Doug Camplejohn’s article Secure Web gateways: slamming the door on malware. Doug provides a great overview of the typical features of enterprise products.
You can get Gartner’s take on the market from their report June 2007 Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateway, 2007. I found this report for free, but you’ll have to register to download it.
[Another great source on this topic is Network World’s Secure Web Gateway Buyer’s Guide. This buyer’s guide has been revamped and offers even more features than before.]
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