Netsweeper
Safeguarding student mental health and online learning with world-leading web and content filtering.
Schools and colleges can provide a safer internet experience and peace of mind for teachers and students, without overburdening resources.
Increasing online safety aligns perfectly with our mission to provide a secure digital environment for education and research in the UK.
Via the Janet Network, our members and customers can now easily enhance online safety through our peering arrangement with Netsweeper.
About Netsweeper
We’ve chosen to partner with Netsweeper Limited, a UK Safer Internet Centre accredited web filtering service for UK schools and colleges, which complies to the Department for Education's guidelines for keeping children safe in education (KCSiE).
Netsweeper’s content filtering is an additional service that can be added to either your Janet IP connection (including Janet Resilient Access), or via our managed SD-WAN.
Benefits
Seamless integration with Janet infrastructure
Adding Netsweeper to your existing Janet connection is easy due to our peering arrangement – eliminating the need for additional configurations and reducing potential compatibility issues. Enhancing your world-class, secure, and cost-efficient digital infrastructure.
Enhanced online safety and compliance
Netsweeper’s web and content filtering solution complies with the Department for Education's keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) guidelines, offering a robust and compliant approach to safeguarding student mental health and well-being.
Advanced monitoring and alerts
Features like onGuard+ utilise AI technology and human review to proactively flag risks such as self-harm, cyberbullying, or unsafe online behaviour, ensuring timely intervention and better protection for students.
Comprehensive filtering and reporting tools
Components such as nFilter and nClient deliver industry-leading traffic filtering, policy management, logging, and analytics, providing administrators with full visibility and control over internet usage in their institutions.
Tailored for educational needs
Designed specifically for education, the solution offers scalable, reliable, and flexible services tailored to meet the unique challenges of the education sector
Key features
Netsweeper Advance comprises of synchronous components working together to create alerts if a user is in progress of harm. These components are nClient, nFilter and onGuard plus software and human review. In other words, onGuard is an alert service intended to be used in combination with the in-house safeguarding team at a school or institution.
nClient
Residing on Windows and macOS based devices (desktop, tablet, laptop, etc.), the client filter will intercept Internet requests, route the required information to the policy server and then process the request based on the decision made at the policy server level.
In the Netsweeper filtering solution, the nClient application will reside on all distributed Windows devices, and provide Netsweeper’s industry leading web filtering services.
nFilter
The core of all Netsweeper filtering platforms, nFilter provides traffic interception, remote filtering services, policy management, logging, reporting, and many other ancillary functions. nFilter is required for the operation of any Netsweeper filtering platform and will power our industry leading filtering solution.
nFilter consists of the following core components.
WebAdmin
Web based administration system that is used to manage all aspects of the Netsweeper platform including:
- administering Netsweeper products/components
- creating filtering policies
- managing administrative access
- generating URL filtering reports
- updating system access rights
- monitoring system usage
- integration with other third-party systems
- integration with Client OSS/BSS systems
Web based administration system that is used to manage all aspects of the Netsweeper platform including:
- administering Netsweeper products/components
- creating filtering policies
- managing administrative access
- generating URL filtering reports
- updating system access rights
- monitoring system usage
- integration with other third-party systems
- integration with Client OSS/BSS systems
Policy server/service
Traffic interception system that is deployed into a network and provided a traffic flow that requires filtering.
- Integrates with the Netsweeper WebAdmin to download the filtering policy
- Integrates with the Netsweeper Category Name Service (CNS) to determine the category of content to be filtered
- Performs specific allow, deny, rewrite, redirect, log, etc.… actions on filtered traffic
- Caches copies of recently categorized URLs to enhance performance and responsiveness
Traffic interception system that is deployed into a network and provided a traffic flow that requires filtering.
- Integrates with the Netsweeper WebAdmin to download the filtering policy
- Integrates with the Netsweeper Category Name Service (CNS) to determine the category of content to be filtered
- Performs specific allow, deny, rewrite, redirect, log, etc.… actions on filtered traffic
- Caches copies of recently categorized URLs to enhance performance and responsiveness
Logger
Logging service that is responsible for the direction of logging data through a Netsweeper solution.
- Receives log data regarding filtered traffic from Netsweeper policy servers and either redirects the logging data to other logging components or logs the data to the connected storage devices
- Integrates with Netsweeper policy server to receive logging traffic
- Integrates with Netsweeper reporter to provide logging data for analysis
Logging service that is responsible for the direction of logging data through a Netsweeper solution.
- Receives log data regarding filtered traffic from Netsweeper policy servers and either redirects the logging data to other logging components or logs the data to the connected storage devices
- Integrates with Netsweeper policy server to receive logging traffic
- Integrates with Netsweeper reporter to provide logging data for analysis
Reporter
Reporting service that analyses data captured by the Netsweeper Logger to generate scheduled, on-demand, or continuous reports and analytics. Integrated with the Netsweeper WebAdmin to download report definitions and determine report scheduling.
Reporting service that analyses data captured by the Netsweeper Logger to generate scheduled, on-demand, or continuous reports and analytics. Integrated with the Netsweeper WebAdmin to download report definitions and determine report scheduling.
Directory synchronisation
Service that provides integration with common directory services technologies such as:
- Active Directory
- Azure
- Google Directory
- Apple Directory, etc.
Service that provides integration with common directory services technologies such as:
- Active Directory
- Azure
- Google Directory
- Apple Directory, etc.
onGuard Plus
onGuard+ is Netsweeper’s dedicated safety monitoring service, developed to provide real-time, proactive digital safeguarding to schools and multi-academy trusts. All device activity is monitored by advanced AI technology, flagging potential risks to student safety and well-being such as self-harm, suicide, and cyberbullying.
onGuard+ scans all internet content, desktop content, and user-submitted data in real-time. Extensive AI technology and human review work in synergy to evaluate all device activity providing timely and accurate alerts that may go un-noticed by completely human moderated solutions.
onGuard Netsweeper’s human review team reviews alerts identified an alert categorised as P1 either by the onGuard software or by the alert validation service. This alert must fall into a relevant category for the alerting service (ie, suicide or self-harm).
Once a P1 alert is identified on user activity and triggers an alert. onGuard records at risk activity for case tracking escalation processing via the onGuard dashboard escalation processing via the onGuard dashboard.
Eligibility
Any education provider using Janet IP or SD-WAN can purchase Netsweeper from Jisc.
Contact your relationship manager or make a customer enquiry.