Rollout: SmoothWall's Corporate Guardian 5

The Upshot SmoothWall's Corporate Guardian 5 blocks employees from surfing the Internet for personal use, but lets administrators loosen the reins during breaks, lunch and after business hours. The product lets administrators place varying restrictions on groups of people or computers, and includes antivirus scanning of Web pages. There are few effective methods of curbing employees' personal Web use in a corporate environment. Products such as SurfControl's Web Filter and Websense Enterprise can schedule Internet use and block particular URLs, but lack a way to examine individual pages for safety and appropriateness. Corporate Guardian 5's Dynamic Content Analysis goes one step beyond the competition by blocking access to many inappropriate sites that aren't included on the URL block list. However, using the built-in antivirus engine doubles the program's required processor power. If you have a large network with high bandwidth, Corporate Guardian 5 will not scale with all the antivirus features enabled. SmoothWall's Corporate Guardian 5 http://www.smoothwall.net/

Smoothwall Corporate Guardian 5 makes it easier to control your employees' personal Web surfing habits without destroying morale. You say what's OK during business hours, but you can also open the pipe at any set time, when you'd rather not discourage people from spending some extra hours in their cubicles.

Corporate Guardian 5 is a Web content filter for the enterprise, but it's also well-suited for a small office environment. As long as you have effective control over your computers and don't let your users remove your enterprise's Web proxy settings on their browsers, this product will let you decide what content your users can view at different hours.