Introduction to Smoothwall's Cloud Products' Clients and Extensions

Our Filter & Firewall product that performs real-time, content-aware, granular control filtering and firewall security is installed onto an appliance and physically installed on your premises. This article aims to give you an overview of the nature and variety of our cloud-based products and their Clients and browser extensions that need to be installed on managed devices for them to work. It outlines our multiplatform support, managed device lockdown requirements and the recommended deployment methods.

Our cloud-based solutions include Cloud Filter, Monitor (Self and Managed Service), and Classroom Manager. For each of our cloud-based solutions to work a Client needs to be installed on a user's device and the device must be managed so that you can prevent the user from circumventing the solution that protects them.

Cloud Filter and Classroom Manager

To consolidate our products, we have developed our newer offerings into a single Client. This Unified Client means you only need to install a single bit of software instead of separate Clients for each solution. For now, this includes Cloud Filter and Classroom Manager. However, we plan to include our other products in future. The functionality that you can use depends on the license that you purchase.

Cloud Filter

This solution lets you administer your web filtering policies from anywhere in the world and protects your users wherever they connect to the internet.

You store and administer your web filtering policies in the cloud. A Client and Chrome browser extension are required on your users' devices, to download and apply your web filter policies. It means that your users have your web filter policies applied no matter where their device is located, for example, outside of your network. The Client and extension also send filtering logs back to the cloud so that you can run web filter reports.

Classroom Manager

This solution lets you see what your students are doing on their device in real time and gives you limited control over your student's devices so that you can guide the class back on track, should the students' attention waver from the classroom topic.

You set up and store your classroom session on the Teacher Portal in the cloud. A Client and Chrome browser extension are required on the students' devices to connect them to the Teacher Portal. They send the real-time activity to the Teacher Portal and let you lock or unlock the device or open a website in a new tab in the browser.

Chrome Browser Extension - Important Managed Device Information

As you've read, the Chrome browser extension is an important part of your solution. However, it means that you need to manage your devices tightly.  By this, we mean that you need to ensure that your users can't bypass or turn off the solution with developer or incognito mode, or by using an alternative browser. You can prevent this by applying group policies that prevent developer and incognito modes, downloading and installing other browsers and preventing the use of USB ports. In case, users try to install another browser from a USB device. We have thought about our customers and have provided some guidance on how to do this for Windows, Mac and Google Chromebooks. See our knowledge base articles in the links further on in this article for more details.

Antivirus - Exclude the Client

To ensure that the solution can work correctly, we recommend that you exclude the Client from being scanned by your antivirus because it might be detected as spyware or malware due to the nature of the inspection that these software programs perform on the Client.

Platforms Supported

Chromebook Yes
Windows Windows 10, 64-bit - Chrome Browser Only.
Mac Mojave 10.14.5 - Chrome Browser Only.
iOS Not supported
Android Not supported

Chromebook

To deploy the Unified Client to your Chromebook devices, we recommend that you use your Google Admin portal. We have supplied instructions on how to deploy the client, force install the browser extension and turn off incognito and developer modes:

Windows

To deploy the Unified Client to your Windows devices, we recommend that you use a Group Policy Object and set up some additional policies so that your users can't use Windows Edge or download another browser to bypass your web filtering or classroom management functionality.

Mac

To deploy the Client to your Mac devices, we recommend that you use a distribution tool such as JAMF. Through testing, we have found that the Client won't force install the Chrome extension. Therefore, you need to force install the extension with a policy. You also need to prevent the use of USB ports.

Monitor - Managed Service

This solution supports you with your safeguarding duties. This solution means you can be notified by phone if there is a severe safeguarding breach, by email for less severe and you can log onto the Monitor Managed Service Portal to view all non-urgent safeguarding breaches.

A Client on your users' devices monitors all text entered by the user, regardless of the application. If it detects a violation, the text is captured and sent to the Smoothwall Monitoring team for escalation. This happens regardless whether the device is connected to the network or not. However, if a client can't connect to the network, it stores the captured violations for up to 14 days. Once connected to the network, the Client sends the capture and details to the Monitor team so they can analyze it and highlight the events in the portal. You can monitor the status of the Client on all your managed devices in the Monitor Manage Service portal.

Platforms Supported

Chromebook Yes
Windows Windows 7 with the KB3033929 Microsoft update
Mac Yes
iOS Not supported
Android Not supported

Monitor - Self-Service

For Monitor Self-Service, the client analyzes text entered by the user and text displayed on the screen. The client scans all content, regardless of the application. The client takes a screenshot when the violation is detected and then sends it to the portal for storage. If general Internet access is not available for the device, the captured data will be stored locally in a secure form until such access is restored.

The client stores device and user identifiers so that you can attribute captures to devices and user accounts. For example, if you have multiple users using a device you can tell which users are triggering captures or one device produces more captures than another. However, for iOS devices captures are only attributed to the device not the user.

Platforms Supported

Chromebook Yes
Windows Windows 7, 8 and 10. 64-bit and 32-bit.
Mac Yes
iOS Internet Browser Only.
Android Not supported