New BETA release - get in sync!
Published in Archived articles on October 30, 2009 by Administrator
I am pleased to announce that a beta version of release 1.5.37 is now available. This is a really important release for me because our development team has been working hard on a feature that has long been requested - automatic Active Directory synchronisation. Yes, it's finally here and I can't wait for you all to try it.
The automation is accomplished via the CensorNet Synchronisation Service which is installed on your primary domain controller (Windows Server 2003 and above only, I'm afraid). When initialised, the service sends the AD structure to CensorNet immediately and then it goes to sleep, polling the AD for changes every 60 seconds. With the service running, you will not need to add any new groups, users, move users or delete users in CensorNet any more - just alter them on the AD and the rest is automatic. The synchronisation can work based on Organisational Units (OU) or Primary Group.
In addition to the synch feature, we have addressed the issue of Microsoft phasing out NTLM authentication in Vista and Windows 7. Prior to this release, the only workaround was to downgrade the NTLM compatibility level by means of a registry change. Not the most elegant solution! You'll be pleased to know that there is a new authentication mode called Transparent Kerberos, which is compatible with Vista and Windows 7, and all versions of Windows Server above 2003. The good news is that this authentication method is a lot lighter than NTLM so there is far less overhead on the domain controller itself, which means faster sessions for end users.
There are a couple of prerequisites. You must be running Internet Explorer 7 or above, Firefox 2 or above or Safari on Mac OSX 10.4 or above on all your client machines. After turning on Transparent Kerberos, you must reference the CensorNet proxy with its fully qualified domain name in the browser proxy settings rather than IP address. Please refer to the Getting Started guide page 17 for configuration guide.
What else is new? We've updated the image filter technology so it is faster and more accurate and we've also further optimised the URL database memory requirements and real-time raters. There's also a fix to a known problem with Google Image searches being incorrectly blocked by CensorNet.
We are hoping to release this to the masses towards the middle of November so please do get in touch with us if you would like to try it out before then. Those that have are very happy with the results.
