Untangle is giving away 5 Education Package 6-month subscriptions during February, each worth up to $3,840.

To encourage schools, government departments and non-profits to try out Untangle, we’re inviting you to download Untangle, then fill in an online form to enter into a draw. We will select five lucky institutions to receive the Untangle Education Standard Subscription, free for six months.

To qualify, participants need to download the free Untangle network gateway and install it in their organization. Once installed, the Untangle ID from the Untangle gateway will need to be entered in the online form, along with your contact details. That’s it.

Competition details and entry for at http://www.untangle.com/Schools-Feb-Giveaway

Written by Mark Floisand

“Untangle® gives us everything we need for keeping our staff and students safe, and at a cost about half that of competitors.”
The Portland Public Schools District in Portland, MI, comprises four schools, an adult and alternative education center, and two administrative offices. Serving 2,100 students, the District believes that access to information resources is essential in preparing students to succeed in a global society. It also maintains that investment in technology is a key step towards accessing information, achieving learning outcomes, and providing equity to the students in the area.

The District has a policy of constantly re-assessing what technology options are available, as its systems and software come up for renewal or replacement. David Palme, Director of Technology, said: “School technology budgets are under pressure. However, we aim not only to maintain service levels, but continue to innovate and move forward. Untangle fits that bill.”

David selected Untangle for the completeness of its security offerings, coupled with the ease with which it can be administered. Portland is using Untangle to block spam, prevent access to inappropriate web sites and stop viruses getting on to the network. David explained, “It’s important for teachers in the schools to have the ability to make administrative changes to our Untangle system. Untangle’s interface is straight-forward and easy to grasp for the occasional user but robust and detailed enough for modification to the unique needs of the educational environment.”

Untangle’s policy management and integration with Microsoft® Active Directory® has allowed David to set up and enforce different web policies for staff and students. “Differentiated access is critical for education”, commented David. “Teachers need to be able to access certain web sites that would just prove a needless distraction to students in the classroom.”

Untangle provides David with reports by user that enable him to see what network usage has taken place, aiding network management, policy enforcement and potential risk assessment. David adds: “Untangle is the lowest priced vendor we’ve found. We’re always looking, but there’s been no need to go anywhere else.” He has just renewed his subscription for another year. Thank you David!

Written by Mark Floisand

Every quarter, Commtouch releases their Internet Threat Trends Report. Last quarter’s report shows:

• An average of 312,000 zombies were newly activated each day for the purpose of malicious activity.
• Spam levels averaged 77% of all email traffic throughout the quarter, peaking at 98% in November and bottoming out at 68% at the end of December.
• Sites in the “Computers & Technology” and “Search Engines & Portals” categories topped the list of Web categories manipulated by phishing schemes.
• “Business” continued to be the Web site category most infected with malware for the third quarter in a row.
• Pharmacy spam remained in the top spot with 81% of all spam messages; last quarter, it reigned with 68%.
• Replicas remained in the #2 spot, falling from 19% to 5.4%.
• Brazil continues to produce the most zombies, responsible for 20.4% of global zombie activity.

If this worries you, try our Commtouch spam protection free for 14 days.

Written by Mark Floisand

Given how limited a typical school’s budget is, it’s disheartening to read that school districts have become targets for online fraud. However, this should provide additional impetus for school district IT managers to build a robust case for internet security systems. CIPA already requires them to protect students from online threats. Now they have to defend the school’s coffers from fraudsters, too.

Written by Mark Floisand

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA) is a public-power utility whose core purpose is to enhance the economic development and the quality of life for people living in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the surrounding areas. WAPA operates electrical generation and water desalination units on the islands of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas. Electrical service is provided to St. John, Water Island, and Hassel Island through submarine cables. WAPA’s IT department supports three main locations across the islands. There are approximately 350 staff that have access to the Internet.

The Network Specialist at WAPA, Julius Aubain, was facing a decision on re-newing his subscription for his dedicated web filter appliance. Julius had several issues to contend with: recessionary budget pressures, requiring him to look for savings across his IT budget; escalating subscription costs from his incumbent vendor; and some employees that had found ways to get around the existing web filter using proxies to bypass it. He needed to look for a replacement; one that would be more cost-effective and more robust.

Julius downloaded the free Untangle multi-function firewall from the web, and installed it on generic computer hardware. He was able to set up an Untangle server specifically suited to his organization’s needs. He then initiated trials of Untangle’s premium applications, and began testing Untangle with internet traffic. The system passed with flying colors, and Julius placed his (new) subscription order with Untangle.

“Untangle was very easy to set up and install,” said Julius. “The fact that I can install the software on servers of my choosing, rather than being tied to a dedicated hardware appliance, gives me much more flexibility and control.” Julius added: “We also found Untangle’s pricing very attractive. I’m now able to properly filter our internet traffic in adherence to our web policy, on a smaller annual budget.” Julius has been running Untangle since November 2009. He’s under budget, and his web traffic is under control.

Written by Mark Floisand

Pickaway County in Ohio has the historic distinction of having the longest-serving sheriff in the USA. Sheriff Dwight E. Radcliff has been in office since 1965. Throughout this time, the Pickaway County Sheriff’s Office has embraced new technology to keep up-to-date.

Today its staff are protected from online threats both in the office and out on the road. Mobile police units are connected to the headquarters through virtual private networks (VPNs) and their internet traffic is scanned and filtered just as it is at their desks. Untangle provides the VPN connectivity and web filtering all in one box.

The Technology Manager at the Sheriff’s Office, Matthew Parish, has deep experience with network security. He is highly familiar with the vendors of dedicated appliances and open-source projects alike. Matthew liked what he saw in Untangle. ”Untangle has integrated best-of-class web filtering from eSoft and combined it with rich reporting, anti-spyware and a host of other services; it’s a complete offering, and really sets the mark in the industry.” Untangle’s virtual rack metaphor has made it easy for Matthew to set up and enforce multiple different web policies for various departments throughout the office.

Matthew originally installed Untangle’s free open-source package at the Sheriff’s Office back in 2007. However, he subsequently upgraded to the premium offering for its additional features: “Untangle now connects to our Active Directory server, which allows us to monitor, track and log web browsing by user account and sign-on. No other product we looked at can do this.”

Matthew installed the Untangle server in transparent mode, just dropping it in behind his existing firewall. It was up and running, filtering web traffic within five minutes. Matthew praises the ease of administration of the Untangle server, and its cost: “Untangle’s subscription pricing was a fraction of the price of other vendors we considered. Given the budget pressures we’re all under these days, this decision just made great sense. We’ve just renewed for another three years”

Written by Mark Floisand

This is the kind of unsolicited feedback that always warms my heart - thank you Michael:

“I guess I’ll put this under this category I just wanted to commend you guys on an excellent product. I’m a MCSE, but my cert is about 5 years out of date (back to windows NT 4) And getting NAT and GPOs working were such a pain. Then one of my telcom buddies told me about untangle. I was a little apprehensive at first, because of the OS Platform. I know enough linux to get me in trouble. Anyway, I decided to take a chance, downloaded the server and installed it on a stand alone machine. I was instantly FLOORED at how easy it was to configure, set up NAT, everything! After a couple days I decided to move the server into a Production environment at the office. We are a non-profit Public Access Television station, and I’ve peiced together every bit of server hardware, cabling and anything you can think of from leftovers and throw aways in order to save money. I pulled our LinkSys router, replaced it with the UT and reconfigured the NIC to the Router settings, and without a hitch, it worked like a charm. Administering our network has never been easier, and the reports make my Board of Directors happy. Once again, thank you so much for a fantastic product that does it all right out of the box.

Regards

Michael Phelps
Technical Supervisor/IT Director
Fairfield Public Access Television”

Written by Mark Floisand

The American Academy of Pediatrics this month issued guidelines for making children’s online experience safer. I applaud the recommendations. However, they could go further. The only guideline on harnessing technology to help  parents manage their kids’ online time is:

“Use tracking software to monitor what Web sites children are visiting”

To my mind, that’s too late. Finding out that a child has already been exposed to undesirable web sites, after they’ve been there, is like diagnosis once already ill. Actively using a web filter, to protect children from visiting undesirable sites in the first place, seems more like preventative medicine.

Courtesy: AAP News Vol. 30 No. 10 October 2009, p. 37
© 2009 American Academy of Pediatrics

Written by Mark Floisand

Today we announced our latest version, Untangle 7.0, which includes new reporting features that provide unmatched visibility at the Internet gateway to help small businesses identify Web misuse and troubleshoot network issues for increased productivity.

Untangle 7.0 enhanced reporting features allow small businesses to:

• Monitor behavior at the user, client and incident level to detect productivity issues
• Understand traffic flows and network usage patterns to optimize performance
• Provide Web content analysis to prevent bandwidth issues and policy violations
• Log access to sensitive data to respond to any security incidents
• Manage and reduce vulnerabilities associated with social networking and rich media sites

Dirk Morris, CTO and Co-Founder of Untangle, will demonstrate Untangle 7.0 at 10:00a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Tuesday October 6, 2009. To register for the Webinar go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/803254440

Written by Mark Floisand

The cover story in Wired Magazine - Why Craigslist is Such a Mess - has garnered a lot of attention.

It would, given that Craigslist (CL) is one of the true internet success stories - reported annual revenues of $100M and just 30 employees. Can you say 90% (net) profit margin? Amazing.

Of course, it’s impossible to separate the story of CL from the story of CN, AKA Craig Newmark, its iconic founder.

CN has been called many things:

• Visionary (…a free marketplace for all)
• Stubborn (…no, we’re not changing the UI)
• Genius (…90% profitability)
• Entrepreneurial (…you did that with no VC?)
• Foolish (…revenues could be $1B)
• Naive (…people are good?)
• Plodding (…the site is ugly and dysfunctional)

Sometimes all these things at once! It’s really entertaining to sort through the armchair analysis, replete with mucho revisionist history.

When I think of CN and try to categorize him (as if that’s fair), I think of two things: “force-of-nature” and “other-worldly.”

CN and his List are a hurricane - nothing can stop it and it seeks neither permission nor blessing. It just goes. And destroys (newspapers). And envelopes (small, local economies). And displaces (eBay). And CL is like the sun, providing opportunity for growth and commerce where none existed. It does these things on its own terms.

CN himself elevates “business” to the spiritual. He can’t really be bothered by detail (business models, GUI design, etc.). Nor can he be distracted by riches or (for the most part) fame. To him and his messianic world view, the world exists as a canvas to do “his thing,” to do good. And the good people of the world reciprocate.

Sounds “saintly,” does it not?

Why would we, in general and through the agency of Wired, cast stones at such a thing?

The answer, of course, lies in human nature and is probably rooted in the first deadly sin. Maybe CN, so right about so many things, got this part wrong…maybe we’re all not entirely “good.”

Written by Bob Walters