August 2019

Deprecated categories

Smoothwall have tidied up the blocklist and identified any categories that are no longer
relevant. The categories listed below are now marked as ‘Deprecated’ and will be
removed in February 2020.

Body onLoad Action, DirectAnim Exploits, Disable createTextRange, Firefox DoS, ID tag Action Overflow, IE WebViewFolderIcon Exploit, nimda, Firefox Cookie Stealing, DirectX Media SDK Exploit, Firefox JavaScript Information Leak, firefoxurl: Cross-browser Exploit, IE VML Rect tag Exploit, URI Handling Command Execution, IE Remote Code Execution, Disable Google Instant, Disable iGoogle, Google link redirector.

July 2019

New Category Release: Household Utilities

Smoothwall has released a new category, titled ‘Household Utilities [NEW]’, that contains gas, water and electricity websites, including phone and internet. Although customers may not wish to block this category, it is provided so that logs and reports accurately reflect the content which users are accessing.

January 2019

New Category Release: Mobile Applications

Smoothwall has released new Mobile Application categories including:

– ClassDojo
– Facebook & Facebook Messenger
– Instagram
– Snapchat
– Twitter

Associated documentation for each of these categories including WhatsApp can be found on our Knowledge Base.

August 2018

New Category Release: Inappropriate/Vulgar Search Terms

Smoothwall has released a new category containing search terms of Inappropriate/Vulgar/Swear words.

This will only trigger the policy if it’s used in a supported Search Engine that we do Search Term Extraction for.

The category is designed for use within a young audience environment where slang & inappropriate terms should not be allowed to be searched.

With this category, you’ll need a valid Decrypt & Inspect policy set up for it to work.

June 2018

New Category Release: Live Streaming Videos

Smoothwall has released a new category to easily block/allow Live Streaming videos on popular sites like YouTube, Facebook & Twitch TV. This category was released due to the lack of moderation in live streaming videos.

With this category, you’ll still be able to use the Audio & Video sites like Youtube, yet be able to block specific live videos from being watched. As long as there is a valid HTTPS Decrypt & Inspect policy in place, you will be allowed to block Live Streams.

You can find out more information on our Knowledge Base.

June 2018

New Category Release: Provocative Images

Smoothwall has released a new category for use in environments where you want to block your users browsing websites that include Swimwear or Lingerie (Male or Female).

This should be used in conjunction with the Pornography category and is designed to be used in an environment with younger users who you do not want to view Provocative Images. This category contains potentially provocative “fancy dress costumes, lingerie, underwear (male/female)”.

May 2018

New Content Modification Release

Smoothwall has released a new content modification called ‘Enforce Google Image Licensing’. The content modification will apply the setting ‘Labeled for reuse with modification’ which will only show images that are free to be used, shared or modified. This along with the ‘Force SafeSearch’ content modification will reduce the number of ‘NSFW’ images drastically.

You can find out more information about this setting here.

*Please note this will significantly reduce the number of images returned regardless of the search.

May 2018

New Category Release: SafeSearch via CONNECT header [NEW]

The new category name ‘SafeSearch via CONNECT header [NEW]’ replaces the old category name, ‘Enable Google SafeSearch [NEW]’.

Content Modification rule to enforce SafeSearch on a limited number of Search engines via a CONNECT header rewrite, for example, google.com -> forcesafesearch.google.com. Google, Bing, and Pixabay services are all supported by this content modification.

This content modification does not require any HTTPS D&I policy to be in place, but it is very limited in its coverage. Because of this, we recommend Force SafeSearch Content Modification to be used as well as this covers more services but works differently in the way it enables SafeSearch, and will require a valid HTTPS D&I policy in place.

For customers who were previously using the “Enable Google SafeSearch [NEW]” category, they do not need to anything as this is the exact same category, just named differently as it covers more than just Google.

More information can be found on this by Google here, or in our knowledge base articles:

Activating safe search
Make search engine browsing safer

March 2018

New Category Release

Smoothwall has released a new category to help with allowing GoTo Software Suite of products through a Smoothwall. If you use GoTo Software and experience any issues with connectivity then follow the Knowledge Base article with our new category “GoTo Software Suite [NEW]” available now on your Smoothwall.

The list of URLs contained within the category has come from LogMeIn support to assure there are only URLs in there used by the GoTo products suite.

March 2018

Leeds

The Leeds Release provides tools to comply with stricter Data Protection legislation, eg the GDPR. Other enhancements include support for TLS mail servers when sending Safeguarding reports and other alerts. Guardian policy changes are now written to an audit log, and the Certificate Authority is linked from the Secure Login Page such that BYOD users can configure their devices to allow Smoothwall’s SSL inspection. The IDex identification client has seen a number of improvements, particularly for larger installations and multi-tenant. Finally, the VPN subsystem compatibility and security has been improved – for example, it is now possible to connect a VPN to the Azure cloud.

New features include:

• GDPR compliance tools
• ‘Subject Access Request’ Report to extract all log data for a given user ID
• ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ tool to anonymize all data about a given user ID
• TLS encryption in SMTP clients, allowing Smoothwall’s alert emails for safeguarding and other matters to be encrypted in transit where your mail server supports it
• HTTPS inspection page link, to ease SSL inspection on BYOD networks

Other enhancements include:

• VPN enhancements
• VPN now supports more DH groups
• IKEv2 supported
• Simplified setup
• Security enhancements – a number of key packages have been updated
• IDex Enhancements
• Better support for large numbers of groups
• Now supports DHCP monitoring for improved accuracy

July 2017

Kenilworth

The Kenilworth release will see the introduction of identification indexing tool IDex. The IDex identification indexing enables reliable user identification regardless of the domain controller infrastructure. IDex is ready to go from installation, it is not reliant on a connection to domain controllers; the system ‘learns’ as users log in.

This fast deployment and no-delay user access make it ideal for all sizes of deployment and easy to scale. IDex is designed to meet the growing need for individual user identification over traditional, less flexible authentication systems.

March 2017

Inverness

The Inverness release brings enhancements to two significant areas of the product: the firewall and Safeguarding. We’ve completely re-designed the firewall rules system and the firewall log viewer. You will now find that the majority of the information you need to manage your firewall is now in one place.
The Safeguarding feature increases the alerting options and improves the reports to help you identify and understand any potential safeguarding breaches much quicker.

January 2017

Hearst

Hearst is a massive re-write of the system to take advantage of more standard packaging (Debian). This is an essential precursor to our cloud developments that you will start to see appear in 2017.

It does have a few new features that you might want see – we have replaced the VPN system to a package with greater security and which is easier to maintain, we’ve added filtering categories for web hosting and collaborative software and we’ve also fixed the Dirty Cow vulnerability (in Hearst-2). Read Documentation.

September 2016

Glamis

Glamis brings enhancements to popular new features including:

• System Restore – Users can manually create a restore point, and one is created by the Smoothwall before an update to the software.
• Safeguarding in the portal – An extension to the popular safeguarding feature, System Administrators can enable staff to run reports themselves and drill down into the detailed view previously only available through the Admin UI.
• Google Directory Integration – Introducing support for Organisational Units to complement the existing support for Groups.
• Bitdefender Anti-Malware engine – Introducing Bitdefender, which regularly tops the anti-malware charts for speed, performance, and thoroughness.

Read Documentation

View our latest Video ‘What’s new in Glamis July 2016‘

March 2016

Framlingham

Introduces Google as a directory service for Chromebooks, whereby Google Apps group membership serves as structure as a directory source for Smoothwall users and groups. Safeguarding is a proactive suite that allows the System Administrator to run reports against users on their network for various time periods to show if users have breached any safeguarding rulesets.

January 2016

Edinburgh

The Edinburgh update brings many improvements to ease of use. It includes a revised certificate management interface for using and managing certificates, improved diagnostics for many services, a client self-installation page for the MITM certificate and improvements for redirecting a Smoothwall to a load balancer.

September 2015

Carisbrooke-1

The Carisbrooke-1 update brings a complete overhaul of the Product Update System, a brand new Real-Time Search Terms Log Viewer and the release of Carisbrooke-2.

Read documentation

August 2015

Carisbrooke

The Carisbrooke update brings enhancements to our multi-tenant functionality for Managed Service providers, Authentication Negotiation, and a Non-SSL Login Page and an upcoming Real-Time Search Query Viewer.

Read documentation

May 2015

Bamburgh

Networking upgrades are the focus of the Bamburgh update, with a new Link Load Balancing system and DNS proxy, along with performance improvements for cluster users.

Read documentation

February 2015

Arundel

This update brings a number of authentication improvements, Smoothwall Connect for Chromebooks, and a number of minor enhancements.

Read documentation