The iPrism appliance line from St. Bernard Software provide Internet filtering capabilities to the organization, both for specified, categorized Web sites and for recognized IM/P2P traffic. The devices are now offered as the "Hybrid," or "h-Series" product line; so named because they are billed by the vendor as able to support any current iPrism Operating Systems as well as the next version of the O/S (due Q1/2008), which the vendor states will additionally support anti-virus features and IM filtering (which will support per user and per protocol policies, as opposed to the already existing IM blocking feature described below). The h-Series appliances range from the 10h, a mini-1U form factor with a single 80 GB drive, an Intel Celeron D processor, and traffic throughput of 10 Mb/sec; through 5 models to the 50h, a 1U appliance with dual, 500 GB hot-swappable (RAID 1 protected) SATA drives, dual Intel Quad-Core 3.0 GHz processors, and traffic throughput of up to 100 Mb/sec. Previous iPrism appliances (prior to the h-Series) are no longer available from--but still supported by--the vendor.

Key filtering features of the appliances are focused on Web site and IM/P2P filtering.

Web site filtering is accomplished via the vendor's iGuard database of categorized Web sites. The DB places Web site URLs in over 80 categories, sub-categories, and 16 customizable categories that can then be used by administrators to define Web site access policies for the organization. The Security category, in particular, is populated with sites that are known to be harbingers of spyware, phishing attacks, or other malicious software. The iGuard database is entirely human-reviewed and defined. Regular updates provided daily, and the special Security category is updated as often as hourly.

A key feature of the iGuard database in particular is the vendor's iPrism Automated Rating Protocol, which automatically sends the most frequently visited (and currently unrated) URLs viewed by your organization to the iPrism team for classification and inclusion in the categorized iGuard database. The vendor states that most such sites are added back to the customer's DB within 24 hours.

IM/P2P blocking can be applied by the appliance as a result of its ability to identify, monitor and block specified IM and P2P traffic regardless of the port being used for the application.

Other features of iPrism include a Report Wizard for the creation of custom reports; real-time monitoring capabilities allowing administrators to view network traffic site-wide, by user, or only that traffic that violates policies; support for delegated administration to remote administrators; support for LDAP authentication; usage tracking reporting for all IM and P2P individual users; proxy support for remote users (allowing mobile users' traffic to be filtered by routing their communications through the central iPrism device); and support for anonymizer blocking.

iPrism is available now; h-Series pricing starts at $1,200. h-Series purchases will receive the next O/S update (due in Q1/2008) free of charge. Visit the St. Bernard Software Web site for further information.