Ten reasons why we think our cloud web security service is better than the rest
It's a bold statement, but one that we feel well placed to live up to. After 18 months of research and development, our new cloud web filtering service is ready for you to take for a test drive. Having been in the business of web filtering since 2002, we understand what works and what doesn't, and we've incorporated all our knowledge and experience into this new product. The decisions we have made have now resulted in a superior web security service - well, we think so at least 
So let me summarise why we feel our cloud service is better than the rest?
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WE DO NOT PROXY DATA. This seems to be the de facto method of providing a cloud web security service but it is really bad news. It is a total waste of bandwidth. It adds latency to each request (no matter what people say) and it relies on the service provider having some really big (and expensive) data centres near to you to keep that latency in check. Expensive overheads means expensive prices that will eventually be passed on to you.
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How does it work if we don't proxy? We use the ICAP protocol which enables us to send a snapshot of the headers from the request to the server where it can then determine, based on URL, whether the request is allowed or denied. This means you're not wasting your bandwidth and we're not spending a fortune on data centres which equals much better value for you.
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We're constantly monitoring the web. We give you control over 450 million URL's, 6 billion web pages in nearly 200 languages. We cover 100% of the Alexa Global 1 million URL's and we're constantly re-checking known sites for malware and changes to content. The database has also been accredited by the UK Department for Education. This enormous amount of web info is categorised for your ease of management, so for example, you can decide whether social networking or shopping sites are available during certain hours of the day, or whether to completely block them. There's nearly 200 categories to choose from.
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We do not need you to configure your browser to use our service. This is because when you sign up , you install a small piece of software on to each of your computers, which we call Cloud Link. This smart service will then handle all web traffic on the PC, regardless of what browser the person is using, and it will also perform silent user authentication so you know who has been browsing what sites and when.
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Using laptops and netbooks is not a problem. As long as the Cloud Link software is installed, the computer will be protected by our web service, regardless of the Internet connection they have (e.g. ADSL, Wi-Fi, 3G). So you can extend the filtering to your remote workers, field sales guys, etc without having to worry about VPN connections back to Head Office. In addition, the Cloud Link client is secured so that only the administrator can modify, stop or remove the software.
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Central control. You can view, manage and report on all your computers running Cloud Link from a simple and secure web application which we run on http://www.cloudwebfiltering.com. So it doesn't matter whether you have 1 office or 100 offices, you can centrally manage the web filtering rules for everyone.
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We don't care about your infrastructure. Yes, that's right. We don't require you to have any particular network design or domain controller software. Whether you run Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Samba or another environment it really doesn't matter because Cloud Link takes care of the authentication and it uses any available gateway to connect back to our cloud. If you do happen to use Active Directory, then we have some neat tools to be able to synchronise users. If you don't have Active Directory, we have an API which can be called from scripts to manage user account synchronisation.
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Granular filtering rules. Yes, there are now three levels of filtering policy. The default policy, which applies to everyone, the group policy which applies to members of a group and the user policy, which applies to an individual user. This means, for example, you can have a filtering policy for your Marketing team and only allow selected members access to Twitter or Facebook to maintain corporate communications. It's totally flexible.
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Comprehensive reporting that tells you exactly what you need to know should a violation of your acceptable usage policy occur.
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If you are a Value Added Reseller or Distributor then we can give you a partner login to the web application which allows you to provision and manage your own customers. You can even upload your own logo and call the service your own. This means you can easily add our hosted web security service to your portfolio as a value add for your customers.
So you've heard the good bits, why not try it out yourself? Contact our sales team today or request a trial from our web site. We can't wait to hear from you
CensorNet Team
