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Bloxx Tracks ACS International Students Online

ACS International Schools has decided to implement Bloxx web filtering with Tru-View Technology throughout its three campuses in the Surrey and Middlesex area, to protect its students online. This decision follows a desire from IT management to provide enhanced safety and security for its students when surfing the net.

ACS International Schools enrols over 2,500 students from 2 ½ to 18 years of age, from more than 70 countries. Following a curriculum based on American and Internationally recognised educational principles and practices from the age of five upwards, pupils have access to the Internet facilities at the three campuses based in Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon in the Southeast of the UK.

“Over the years we’ve used various different tools to regulate our students’ activity on the web, however we wanted a more configurable solution to enable us to limit access to certain types of website, depending on the credentials of the user logging onto the system,” explains ACS Infrastructure Manager, Jon Timson.

ACS noted that Bloxx Tru-View Technology would give the IT team the ability to customise access to websites depending on the user rather than the PC they were using.

“Previously, we only had the ability to regulate use of the Internet depending on the PC being used, but this just isn’t practical in the dynamic movement of pupils around the various IT labs and libraries at the schools.”

Bloxx reseller LAN 2 LAN, working closely with the ACS Infrastructure Team, installed a Bloxx TVT-500 appliance on each campus to monitor the 1500 Macs and PCs housed throughout the three campuses. They have configured the sensitivity of the Bloxx filtering categories for different ages, depending on whether the pupil attends Lower, Middle or High School. In addition they have further regulated the sites the pupils have access to, based on the subjects they study. This ensures that they can still access information from websites relevant to their curriculum.

“We have a large IT network here at ACS but have a relatively small IT team to support it, which is the case in many school environments. Not only is Bloxx extremely simple to drop into and install on your system, but I’ve noted already how intuitive the solution is in its day-to-day use,” explains Timson. “You don’t need to have a high level of technical knowledge to use the solution and that being said, I’ve had no problems passing it onto colleagues to configure policies for their respective departments.”