This article applies to organisations with a Cloud setup, and those with a 'Hybrid' setup (both On-Premise Appliance and Cloud).
When you use the Diagnostics page, Filter Mode should show as Mode 2.
What are the different Filter Modes?
Mode 1
Smoothwall uses Mode 1 as the backup filtering mode until it has enough information to apply Mode 2.
In Mode 1, Smoothwall blocks access to websites if:
- The URL or domain is in our categorised domains list.
- The URL or domain includes words, terms or phrases that indicate a specific type of content.
Note
Mode 1 for the Cloud Filter Extension works differently from Mode 1 for the Smoothwall Browser and Android Filter App. The websites blocked can vary depending on the device.
While in Mode 1:
- Smoothwall can’t apply any Web Filter Policies, Real-time content filtering or Search term filtering.
- Users are not authenticated, so activity is not tracked and logged, and Safeguarding Alerts won’t be generated.
Mode 2
In Mode 2, users are authenticated, full filtering is applied, and user activity is logged.
What do we do if Mode 1 shows?
If the Diagnostics page on a device shows Mode 1, contact Smoothwall Support.