Internet Access Control
The wealth of information offered on the Internet can be a distraction
to your users, or even a possible legal liability. In development is a
new version of our NAT product that adds control of your Internet
Accesses to your management toolkit.
What is Access Control?
Internet Access Control is the ability to restrict access to material,
services or even the entire Internet, under the control of the NAT
administrator. It gives you the ability to tailor your users' view
of the Internet to comply with your guidelines. Abilities in the
next version of NAT software will include:
- Blocking access to specific sites
- Permitting access to specific sites
- Limiting access to just email (SMTP and POP3)
- Preventing any Internet access
- Combinations of the above
In addition, you will be able to group your internal hosts by function,
and set different combinations of access rights for each group. You
may block your user workstations, while permitting access by your
mail relay host and your administrator workstation.
Good Site, Bad Site
When enabled, the NAT Access Control will check the IP Address of
the host your user is trying to access, against a list of undesirable
sites, and prevent the request from going into the Internet. What
your user "sees" depends on the client software, but is usually
something like "connection refused by host." The deflected access
may be logged for administrator review if desired.
The biggest problem with the Good Site, Bad Site model is the ease
with which a site administrator may change the IP Address of the
host computer. A server administrator that intends to distribute
objectionable information may thwart this protection by continuously
changing the IP Address of the server, thereby becoming a "moving
target."
Timed Rights
A feature of the new NAT software will be automatic control of
access rights based upon time. One mode will permit automatic
application of an Access Rights Profile based on the time of day,
freeing the administrator of the need to enable or disable the
rights of a group by hand. This could be used to allow unlimited
"surfing" before and after the normal workday, and possibly at lunch.
The other mode is like a countdown timer. The administrator or
designee may enable a certain level of access rights for a group for
a specific period. At the end of the period, the rights revert to
the normal ones for that group. This is particularly useful for
schools, where a teacher might wish to enable full surf abilities
for a computer lab while the teacher is there to provide supervision.
The timer keeps the teacher from forgetting to disable the lab when
the class is over.
This page was last modified on April 19, 1996.
Copyright © 1996 Network Safety
This information is proprietary to Network Safety. Network Safety, WebElite and NetNAT
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