Sunday, April 20, 2008

Content Filtering on SBS (including standard)


SBS Premium has been able to do basic content filtering for a long time. It is just a matter of setting up something like a block list and adding the URLS to that list.

However these days customers are asking for category blocking - ie they want to block all "adult entertainment sites" or "social networking sites"

Well the solution I have found that works well, is cheap and reliable is to use OpenDNS
To get it to work with SBS you will first want a static IP - (I assume you have this already for exchange - you CAN use dynamic DNS but it takes some extra setting up).

Then the next step is to add the OpenDNS servers - 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (check the site to make sure these are still correct) as forwarders in the Microsoft DNS console on your SBS server.

You can have additional DNS servers as long as you put them AFTER the OpenDNS servers - this way if both OpenDNS servers fail (unlikley) then the internet would still work however without content filtering.

You should also remove the root hints (although again it prefers to use the forwarders so will usualy still work).

OK next setup an account on OpenDNS, setup your static IP as a network (make sure you only include the static IP or block of IP's that are yours (don't include a whole class C if only one IP belongs to your connection). It will then verify that you own that IP, and you can setup your content filtering categories and block messages.

Now I assume that you hand our your IP's via DHCP and ONLY have the SBS server as a DNS server for your PC's. If you have additional internet connections and/or branch offices you will need to set those up.

For most deployments the whole thing can be set-up, tested and the manager shown how to manage categories in an hour or two.

Make sure you read the T&C's as this service is not really designed for resale - its more like a free service on the internet that you can use yourself or help set-up for customers but explain to them how to use it and that it is free.

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