{"id":21143,"date":"2020-04-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedsystems.com\/blog\/firewall-filter-limitations-for-remote-learning-challenges\/"},"modified":"2024-12-05T22:56:56","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T22:56:56","slug":"firewall-filter-limitations-for-remote-learning-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedsystems.com\/en_uk\/blog\/firewall-filter-limitations-for-remote-learning-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Limitations of Firewall Filters for Remote Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nRemote Learning Challenges: Are firewalls secure enough?
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Many districts have relied on their firewall for content filtering and reporting. While firewalls have never provided the granularity of a purpose-built web filter, they\u2019ve been sufficient for some schools\u2026until now. School closures, take-home devices, and remote learning all produce remote learning challenges that expose the limitations of firewall filters for protecting students.<\/p>\n

1. Firewall filters are designed for network traffic<\/strong>
\nFirewalls are designed to monitor and control network traffic, acting as a barrier between the school network and the outside world. Now that school devices are at home, the traffic that needs to be filtered is no longer on the school network.<\/p>\n

2. Firewall filters aren\u2019t purpose-built for mobility<\/strong>
\nAs schools added mobile devices and started take-home programs over the last few years, some firewall filters built agents to filter those devices. But because firewalls were never built for mobility, the features and functionality of any mobile filtering are limited, just when schools need it to be robust.<\/p>\n

3. Firewall filtering from off-site devices can cause bottlenecks<\/strong>
\nMobile filtering agents added to firewall filter solutions typically route traffic back to the school network and through the firewall. With learning moving online and all traffic coming from off the school network, this causes bottlenecks and slow downs \u2014 especially with the increase in streaming content and video conferencing.<\/p>\n

4. User identification is insufficient with firewall filters<\/strong>
\nOn the network, firewall filters often relies on NAC integrations for user identification. Off the network, it falls back to web authentication, where students log in and their traffic is associated with the home IP. In addition to being clumsy (especially for younger students), this creates significant challenges with multiple students in one home. Because they\u2019re all on the same home IP, all traffic will be associated with the first student to log in making both policies and reports inaccurate.<\/p>\n

5. Firewall filters require on-site maintenance and upgrades<\/strong> Through Coronavirus closures, most school IT departments are also working from home, at least part of the time. Hardware on your network, such as a firewall filter, will require technicians to go on site for any maintenance or upgrades.<\/p>\n

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\nA better option than a firewall filter? A web filter built for mobility.
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Lightspeed Filter\u2122<\/a> is a cloud-based filter built to protect students on any device, anywhere. This means:<\/p>\n