D-Link DSD-150 SecureSpot Internet Security Device (security appliance)

I am a computer systems professional that has 7 computers in my home. Each family member has a laptop and I myself have three computers. My home is wired with Cat 5 and high speed internet. Since I have kids surfing the net, I have special technology that allows me to monitor their internet activity.

A few months ago, I discovered one of my kids visiting a porn site that had some very bad content. I am not just talking nudity, and normal sex. It contained hard core material including sexual acts with animals. It was enough to turn my stomach, and I am not a prude. The site was located in Brazil.

I immediately disconnected my son from the internet and banned him from his computer for a month. During that month, I researched and came across this Securespot product. I researched it and decided to give it a try.

I have been using it for almost 2 months and I am very pleased with the results. It works as described. I would strongly recommend this product to all parents who are concerned about protecting their kids from the bad content on the internet.

This is a very sophisticated piece of technology and does require having a certain amount of computer expertise, but if you are patient and you take the time to configure it for your needs, then this is an excellent product.

This is an all in one weapon that will provide effective protection for many of the threats that exist on the internet.

If you are not sure about your computer skills, then hire some Geeks to install and configure this device. It is not hard to install, but setting up the profiles could be tricky for the average person. When configured correctly, it works like a charm.

I strongly recommend this product. We need more products like this on the market.

After I walked into the living room one morning in the wee hours and found my teen-aged son online, I decided to take a look at the router logs that evening. After checking the logs, and his destinations I found that this was the NOT first time he had been visiting porn sites, some of which were really nasty.
I turned on keyword blocking for his MAC immediately, and installed router logging software, then went looking for more tools.
The DSD-150 answered my immediate needs The web filtering does not slow web access down so far as I could tell. The Parental Controls: Categories, Block/Pass Lists, Scheduling, User and Computer Profiles are excellent and flexible, although non-simple to implement. Web blocking covers over 25 categories. Child porn is blocked by default, and should the block be disabled, a warning is issued.
Several levels of security are available, low, medium and high. The firewall, anti-virus, download blocking, features which require the download of a software client from the vendor site are in the high security profile. The web filtering is in the low profile and does not require the client. I wound up running the client only on the teen-aged boy's prc's, and enabled all the controls. One nice thing is a "safety lock" which has tunable levels that track the number of content violations and apply a lock based on the desired filtering level.
The architecture is provided by Bsecure Technolgies. Inc. I was told by 2nd level support that filtering, especially in the porn area is provided by St. Bernard, and the Firewall, Anti-virus/Spam is provided my McAfee. (a.) 1st level support sometimes was clueless.
The client does not play well with Avenquest / VCom's Systems Suite, or the CA security suite available from my ISP. This is why I only ran the web filtering on my home development platforms. Only Windows and Apple boxes can run the client, Linux clients will only be able to use the web filtering.
When my son's school system provided Mac Notebooks to high school students, as an IT Pro, I was very interested in the system wide roll-out. The school laptops were allowed to be taken home. The school's IT department set up a protocol on all the locked down Mac Laptops so that all Internet access was routed through the school system's Barracuda Spam Firewall. With all the Macs being locked down by the School System's IT department, I was unable to load the OSX 10.3/4 client. This caused a block on the Apple's Interweb access. I finally got it resolved by whitelisting the name of the Barracuda device in the DSD-150. After that, everything was okay.
A major shortcoming (IMHO typical of most pro-sumer level network products) Is a lack of a CLI or scripting interface.
The reason that I no longer use the DSD-150 is the annual cost factor. I have added enough machines to make the annual renewal costs excessive. I have instituted alternative measures, mainly by signing up with OpenDNS and setting my overall web blocking. Other measures are constantly being evaluated, and I'll put them in place.
--
In conclusion, if you are willing to pay the freight, both in administrative headaches as well as re-occurring costs then the D-Link DSD-150 is well worth it.