I’ve been working with Websense for many years. It’s very pricey and since not everyone can afford it, I have had to find a workaround. The answer for me is simply safesquid. Here’s how I did it with very little user intervention, and no touching of client pcs/macs.

Step 1. I installed the new 8.04 LTS version of Ubuntu server with all default options on a Dell Poweredge 750. Install prerequisites.
“apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev build-essential”

Step 2. Install safesquid. This tutorial has everything you need to get safesquid up and running.

Step 3. Pull down the blacklists and install. Install clamav.
“apt-get install clamav clamav-daemon clamav-freshclam”. See the above link on how to get it working.
I also added “/etc/init.d/safesquid start” to /etc/rc.local.

Step 4. Configure an A record for “proxy” and a cname of “wpad”.

Step 5. Create a wpad.dat file. Mine is simple for now. I installed apache on the safesquid box and put the dat file in the root.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { return “PROXY x.x.x.x:8080; DIRECT”; }

Step 6. Add option 252 in dhcp and point it to http://wpad/wpad.dat

Step 7. Inform users to enable auto configuration of proxy in their browsers.

Step 8. Once I think every thing is ok, I’ll block outbound http(s) from everything except the proxy server.

Step 9. Configure reporting. “apt-get install sarg” Install squint.

You can buy a subscription to urlblacklist.com and safesquid for around 170 bucks a year per 50 users. Not bad.

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