We are excited to announce, on behalf of our wireless partner Meraki, improvements to the MX security appliance series that make K12 network management even simpler.
Improvements to Meraki’s MX series include:
- SafeSearch (Google, Bing, Yahoo!)
- YouTube for Education
- Web caching
- Support for group-policy
- Content filtering
- Ability to block encrypted search
Using Meraki’s user-friendly dashboard, network administrators can enable “web search filtering” to force all web searches to be filtered by Google, Yahoo! and Bing’s SafeSearch filters. “Block encrypted search” can also be enabled in the dashboard to curtail students’ attempts to access innappropriate content by prefixing a URL with https://.
Content filtering now blocks access to websites based on their URL’s registry in your local database and with real-time cross-referencing with content filtering partners. Content filtering partners update their lists constantly, providing even more content filtering coverage through your MX security appliance.
Schools can also enter their YouTube for Schools ID in the dashboard to limit YouTube content to educational videos.
Group-based policies allow network administrators to provide varying levels of Internet access to specific groups of users. Teachers, students, guests and administrators may all have different levels of access to websites, bandwidth resources and search terms/results.
One of our favorite improvements in the MX is web-caching. Students are often asked to view the same video or access the same website as a group of users. The MX will cache, or store, content locally so videos are served from the local appliance instead of the hosting server. This frees up bandwidth and speeds up downloads.
Learn more about Meraki Wireless Networks
These improvements are available now to current MX owners through an upgrade process. Free trials are always available; use this link to request a free trial of an MX security appliance from Meraki, or contact ITS for special K12 pricing on an MX400.