Anne Marie Chaker of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article (subscription required) about schools trying to be proactive about the cyberbullying problem. Schools are writing new policies prohibiting harrassment and bullying using electronic media, but many are concerned that they don’t have a right to intervene in situations that occur off-campus. Others are leaving their policies open to the possibility of grabbing some off-campus power. Oregon state especially is arguing that a school does have jurisdiction over cyberbullying cases if they cause disruption in school or makes attending school difficult for the victim.
I personally think that we have enough government agencies that can exercise police force and we don’t need the schools to join in. However, I still think schools should do everything they can to curb cyberbullying that occurs on campus. The problem now is that the school don’t have the tools to easily and effectively enforce their network acceptable use policies. Many schools are updating their policies now, and they will find that their web filters don’t cut it when it comes to catch cyberbullying as it occurs or when trying to build a case against a perpetrator after the fact.
What does work is monitoring. Monitor all communications - postings, webmail, email, attachments, IM, etc., with a solution that can intelligently find the threats, categorize them, send alerts and store the complete transaction for later retrieval. This intelligent monitoring could be the school’s digital playground duty-much more effective than a librarian or teacher trying to look over students’ shoulders.
If you are interested in looking at a solution to really allow your school to enforce it’s acceptable use policy and stop cyberbullying, Vericept is your best bet right now. Vericept does the above and more and has many existing school deployments. They categorize traffic and make it easy for schools to give some "bite" to their policies. I don’t care what filter you are using or how much you spend on it, you will find all sorts of activity on your network that you will want to fix. There are other solutions that could probably do the same thing, such as Vontu or Reconnex, but they focus on corporate verticals and so their solutions aren’t dialed in for schools. (If you feel otherwise, please comment below or send me an email.) Websense has finished integrating Port Authority into their solution, so they might be an option as well, but they also target the enterprise.
If you have any interest or questions about Vericept, please email me or leave a comment.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Marcus // Feb 21, 2007 at 7:22 am
Actually, we use Fidelis Security’s XPS appliance here at the 10th largest school district as it blocks the information we are tracking vs. vericept who just monitors.
2 Dwight // Dec 31, 2007 at 10:41 am
Vericept also has the ability to block, however isn’t it beneficial to know the content of the activity rather than just block? Vericept allows you to see a recreated screen shot of each violating event – for example: if a student sent a teacher a threatening email because of a poor grade http://www.ocregister.com/news/district-school-cyber-1948249-student-high . If a communication is just blocked – then you never become aware of a problem that is on it’s way to becoming a major liability and safety hazard to the school or an individual.
If a student is plotting some school violence or doing hacker research or if a teacher is communicating to a student inappropriately/sexually – you are far better off knowing the full content than just blocking.
Knowing the content allows you to be proactive – not just reactive. I do free evals with schools all the time with the Vericept product. I have never found a blocking device or filter that is effective in stopping; IM’s, blog use, P2P, Proxy use, adult, gambling etc. However, Vericept shows you all the activity that is happening on your network – including what is getting around your filter. With Vericept you find more than FERPA/HIPAA/FCRP violations –
Vericept provides the visibility you need, in an otherwise anonymous situation, to take ‘proactive’ steps that will minimize the degree and depth of liability.
Liability happens and grows in steps. Each step compounds the liability to the district. Vericept will capture, flag, and notify you of each step.
Your liability is reduced when you can intercede at an earlier stage in the development of what can grow to be a much larger liability.
3 Bob // Feb 12, 2008 at 8:15 am
Actually Vericept does not have the ability to block. All of their products will scan and capture the information but there is no active blocking mechanism…. now if you use their email product and combine it with Entrust then you can block emails and only emails that meet the criteria you set.
4 Jon Robinson // Feb 27, 2008 at 9:16 am
“Actually Vericept does not have the ability to block.”
That was one of the points of the article. Vericept doesn’t need to block. Again, what does work is monitoring.
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