SafeDNS releases the MSP Cloud Teleport Program for any MSP experiencing the End of Life program with Cisco Umbrella.

We are eager to make this sucker punch painless and help you migrate fast & easy to the most fitting web filtering solution. To make the move smooth, join our program to switch from OpenDNS to SafeDNS.

We do everything to stay customer oriented when it comes to MSPs. We don’t need to be an MSP to understand their demand and needs – we simply listen and take into account their feedback that values the most.
No need to go through tons of meetings, NDAs, agreements and contracts to simply get a trial or a quote. There is zero paperwork involved to start working with us

Most importantly, our tech support is always online within a quick reach via chat, phone, or email. If help is needed urgently, we recommend using a chat – in the last month our specialists have taken approximately 67 seconds to reply.

SafeDNS partner program offers a centralized panel to create and manage your customers in one place with no need to login to your customer’s account in order to make changes in the settings. All you need to remember is your username and password to run all your clients.

SafeDNS has released the new MacOS agent. For all Mac users, this means more efficient use of web filtering software and the option to filter separate devices, which differs agents from browser dashboard access.

The process shall be familiar, or simply intuitive for new users. First, you need to register on the website and adjust the settings in your personal account. The next step would be installing the Mac agent from the Support tab on the website or the Dashboard in the cabinet.

The agent enables filtering & allows you to switch between filtering profiles. It can be used within the same tariff on multiple devices. After installation, the agent starts automatically, asking the user for a pin code to change the settings in the agent.

There are several tabs in the agent.

The first tab, Policy, opens by default. In there you select a profile from the list by simply clicking on it.

By clicking on the second tab, System Information, you get a detailed list of system characteristics with network profiles and agent version, protection status, user filtering profiles and much more.

The Debug tab shows the state of interaction of agents with DNS proxy and the ability to send logs to our technical support, which will allow you to understand possible problems in the agent’s work.

On the top panel there is a button for switching the protection status allowing you to disable and enable filtering without logging out.

Below the title of the program there is a user panel that displays the account, IP address, tariff plan and, for most users who have a subscription with an expiration date, the end date of the tariff.

The agent will be available for download tomorrow.

Being compliant with standards means being a quality product. That’s exactly what we are about to discuss in the article below.

SafeDNS helps organizations become compliant with CIPA, IWF, BpjM, HIPAA and other regulations, but for the users new to web filtering, these abbreviations might mean nothing. Whether you are an experienced user or a newbie, the below will clear out any questions you have on various compliances.

Why is CIPA important?

Since the Children Internet Protection Act was passed in 2000, a lot of the online environment had changed. Global digital population is now 5 billion users and counting, but back then in the beginning of the digital era it was about 300 million.

Access to the internet for a lot of teenagers and kids was only available in a school or a public library. Being interested in everything on the global web, students did more than just their homework – the whole internet was opening up for them as the school years were going by. Respectively, the government had to introduce some guidelines for schools & libraries on how to protect the kids from the content they should not see.

That is how and what for CIPA, a document that regulates the exposure of inappropriate content to children, was created back in 2000.

To be CIPA compliant means to guarantee cybersecurity of the schoolkids from obscenity, child pornography & harmful content.

Here is a CIPA compliance checklist.

IWF & Project Arachnid

Being IWF compliant means being against child pornography and blocking all child abuse content online. Internet Watch Foundation has formed a list of URLs to be blocked, and it is constantly updating.
Project Arachnid is also a charity against child sexual abuse based in Canada. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has already processed 141 billion+ images of child abuse.Those also form the list of prohibited resources that web filtering restricts access to.

BPjM

Similar to the previous regulations, this one comes from Germany. The Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors (German: Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien or BPjM) is a German federal agency that is responsible for censoring media that is suspected to be harmful to the younger generation. The results of such works are formed in The List of Media Harmful to Young People which includes movies, games, printed resources and audio recordings. Once a piece enters the List, it stays there for 25 years. After this period, it might be left out and thought to be no longer harmful or left in.

Here is a BpjM compliance checklist.

HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is aimed to safeguard PHI, protected health information. Such information may include names, addresses, phone numbers, medical records, or even photos. What web filtering can do in this regard is to prevent a data breach by simply not gaining access to malicious websites at the corporate network level.

Here is a HIPAA compliance checklist.

As you might have already noticed, our dashboard has a “new” flag – it means AppBlocker is now added to the SafeDNS infrastructure.

AppBlocker is a feature that blocks access to various groups of apps. It helps users keep the business infrastructure safe with a more granular filtering & easily block all domains related to certain applications, such as file sharing, system monitoring, VPNs etc. Basically, any apps that might bring any cybersecurity risks upon your business or data theft to your system.

The apps form groups for blockage:

• ecosystems (Apple, Google, WeChat and more),
• file sharing services (Dropbox, uTorrent, 4shared and more)
• messaging apps (Slack, Snapchat, Viber and more),
• portals (Baidu, Yahoo etc),
• technology services (GitLab, GitHub),
• VoIP (RingCentral, Zoom, LogmeIn and more),
• VPN services (NordVPN, CyberGhost VPN and more),
• cybersecurity services (Shodan, Zscaler),
• financial services (Ethermine, Flypool and more),
• mail services (ProtonMail, Thunderbird, Hushmail and more),
• remote desktop services (RemotePC, AnyDesk, TeamViewer).

To see the full list of apps to block, check out the Categories tab in the dashboard, and then choose AppBlocker.

The user is free to choose any app or app group to block, as the list is fully customizable.

Try it out and see for yourself!

Biden turns to Congress to limit targeted social media ads for kids.

As the New York Times reports, President Biden is eager to shield children from obscene internet content presented in ads. Moreover, he is planning a broader campaign for the mental health of the younger generation, as he reveals in his first State of the Union speech.

“It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children,” he declares.

The interaction of kids with social media can be extremely harmful and damaging. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, leaked some of the documents that state Meta was aware they made teenagers feel bad about themselves. Extreme and obscene content is shown to young people, which causes mental illnesses by diminishing kids’ self-worth.

One of the solutions Biden suggests is to ban targeted ads aimed at children, Bloomberg states. The process will take some time to obtain funding and become a full legal act, and meanwhile, you could protect your kids or yourself from the harmful side of the internet in a couple of clicks with a web filtering solution.

SafeDNS offers different kinds of plans tailored to your needs.

Get your 15-day Free Trial and see for yourself!