Research from the London School of Economics shows that nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. In most cases, these inappropriate sites were accessed unintentionally when a pupil used a seemingly innocent sounding word to search for information or pictures.

The ongoing dilemma therefore, is to balance the rich technology resources which the Internet can offer pupils, with the challenges of protecting them and the network from the vast number of threats lurking there. How do you keep your pupils safe and still give them all the access they need to legitimate sites?

To address these challenges, The Junior King’s School has successfully installed St. Bernard’s dedicated Internet-filtering appliance, iPrism, to help ensure network security while protecting pupils at the Canterbury site. iPrism is proving very popular with schools because it is a low maintenance Web filtering solution which doesn’t interfere with the school’s network and also operates seamlessly in the background. It therefore enables staff to monitor and control Web access, making the Internet a more safe and productive environment for all users of the school’s network.

The solution was installed and configured by Storm Europe, a leading reseller of security solutions for the network infrastructure from the desktop to the gateways.

Founded in 1879, the Junior King's School’s roots go back to the sixth century and the arrival in Canterbury of St Augustine. Bringing the school into the 21st century has meant exploiting the latest that IT can offer education, and with that has followed a series of security headaches for the school’s Network Manager Nigel Prebble.

Mr Prebble explains: “As a coeducational Boarding and Day School with nearly 400 pupils aged from three to 13 years, we face special sensitivities in terms of limiting Internet access to safe, secure websites. As well as the ever changing legislation demands, we need to be able to reassure parents that their children cannot access inappropriate websites or unsafe chat rooms.”

“St Bernard’s iPrism allows us to adhere to a security policy at a price that we can afford. It offers excellent reporting functionality and gives us all the hands on control that we need. It is also extremely easy to use and saves valuable time; above all, it offers peace of mind!” he concludes.

“iPrism provides schools with much needed control and helps them to protect their pupils and staff, as well as their reputation,” comments Mark Vickers from Storm Europe. “It also enables them to enforce a simple but effective Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for Internet access which is essential from a legislative perspective.”

For further information visit:
www.junior-kings.co.uk
www.stbernard.com

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