Ever wonder where your kids are surfing on the Internet? If you have a business, do you wonder if your employees are using company time to update their facebook status or searching the latest bargain on craigslist instead of working? Do you want to protect your home or office network from visiting dangerous websites?
There are ways to do it. One way is you can buy a content filtering appliance which will cost you thousands of dollars. Another is to build your own (if you are tech savvy enough) using an open source program like dansguard.
At some point I did tried using dansguards but I gave up after few weeks because it's just not working for me until I discovered OpenDNS.
OpenDNS is a free service that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. There a three ways to setup openDNS. Either on your computer, through your router, or through your existing DNS Server.
Once you're up and running, you can start by choosing different pre-configured security setup that will block unwanted traffic such as porn, ad-wares, phishing websites, known rouge sites and more. You can also have the option to block specific website by just adding to your blocked list. The changes is almost instantaneous. In addition, you can turn on access log to record websites that are being visited.
I have implemented OpenDNS in our office and the effect is remarkable. Traffic went down by almost 50%. Productivity went up and calls for virus warning just went down. Although it made me unpopular to some staff who can no longer access their favorite music sites or social networking sites. I didn't mind because it's my job to keep the company's network safe and secure.
If you decide to use OpenDNS, I would love to hear how it worked for you.
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