SonicWall Content Filtering Service (CFS) enforces protection and productivity policies for businesses, schools and libraries to reduce legal and privacy risks while minimizing administration overhead. SonicWall CFS utilizes a dynamic database of millions of URLs, IP addresses and domains to block objectionable, inappropriate or unproductive Web content. At the core of SonicWall CFS is an innovative rating architecture that cross references all Web sites against the database at worldwide SonicWall co-location facilities. A rating is returned to the SonicWall security appliance and then compared to the content filtering policy established by you. Almost instantaneously, the Web site request is either allowed through or a Web page is generated by the SonicWall security appliance informing the user that the site has been blocked according to policy.
With SonicWall CFS, you have a flexible tool to provide comprehensive filtering based on keywords, time of day, trusted and forbidden domain designations, and file types such as Cookies, Java™ and ActiveX® for privacy. SonicWall CFS automatically updates the filters, making maintenance substantially simpler and less time consuming.
SonicWall CFS can also be customized to add or remove specific URLs from the blocked list and to block specific keywords. When a user attempts to access a site that is blocked by the SonicWall security appliance, a customized message is displayed on the user’s screen. SonicWall security appliance can also be configured to log attempts to access sites on the SonicWall Content Filtering Service database, on a custom URL list, and on a keyword list to monitor Internet usage before putting new usage restrictions in place.
SonicWall CFS Premium blocks 56 categories of objectionable, inappropriate or unproductive Web content. SonicWall CFS Premium provides you with greater control by automatically and transparently enforces acceptable use policies. It gives you the flexibility to enforce custom content filtering policies for groups of users on the network. For example, a school can create one policy for teachers and another for students.