Thanks to the redeployment of the NetSpective Content Filter in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System’s district-wide server, staff and students can operate on the World Wide Web (WWW) in relative cyber safety.

Configured to block objectionable material targeted by Children’s International Protection Act (CIPA), including pornography and hate speech, the filter also restricts access to sites with high bandwidth, network security or productivity impact, such as anonymous proxies, Web mail, voice over Internet Protocol (IP), streaming media, peer to peer, entertainment, games, shopping and social networking (such as Facebook and MySpace).

“We currently have 45,000 students in relative cyber safety, plus more than 7,000 employees and 25,000 personal computers across the 89 sites in our School System network,” said Jesse Noble, chief technology officer for the district.  “Prior to getting NetSpective, we did not have any consolidated networking between locations, and each school handled its own connectivity. 

“We started with NetSpective originally in 1999, shortly after we received E-rate funding for our district-wide area network.  It has the ability to control our network traffic and also give high value for the investment.  It’s easy to use, requires a minimal effort from our staff and doesn’t require any extra server hardware.”

The filter was installed and running within 15 minutes, Noble said.  After the initial installation, the School System came back to the product a second time.  There are 53 IT people on the School System team, and the reliable filter allows them to focus on other duties.  The flexibility allows them to address special educational requirements and also address the 10,000 Web pages the staff manages for various district, department and teacher needs.  The filter is a product of TeleMate.Net Software.