How Web-Filtering-as-a-Service Works
What is Web-Filtering
A Web filter is computer software that limits the websites a person can access on their computer. We use them to prohibit access to websites that host malware. These are usually sites associated to pornography or gambling. To put it simply, web filtering software filters out the web so that you don’t access websites that may host malware that will affect your software. They allow or block online access to places websites that may have potential dangers. There are many Web-Filtering services that do this.
Content Filtering
Network managers can incorporate hardware appliances or install filtering software on dedicated servers. Both mobile content filtering and cloud-based content filtering are becoming more important. Information filtering must be taken into consideration for mobile and other devices. It doesn’t matter whether they are held by businesses or by their employees. Devices used at home should also have information filtered, especially by kids. Content filters screen out undesirable content by matching character strings.
Ways you may have seen content filtering
Web-filtering is a type of content filtering with the content being websites. To make it easier to understand how web-filtering works we can also look at other forms of content filtering. A common form of content filtering that we don’t even think about is email filtering. Gmail filters emails that may be spam so that there’s less emails for us to look at and only the ones we care about. There’s also the process of filtering out executable files that threat actors use to install harmful software. This process is called executable filtering. DNS filtering is the process of preventing content or network access from hazardous sources. They do so by utilizing a special form of DNS resolver or recursive DNS server. To filter undesired or harmful information, the resolver contains either a blocklist or an allowlist.
