Ministry of Education Takes Up CommSoft’s Offer: NetMaster Free To All Kiwi Schools

The Ministry of Education has endorsed CommSoft Group’s offer to make NetMaster Office free to kiwi schools and will contribute to the programme by supplying administration and technical support. “The Ministry of Education welcomes CommSoft's offer,” says Jonathan Beveridge, ICT Helpdesk, Ministry of Education. “Monitoring internet activity is a simple and effective way for schools to support safe internet use.”

NetMaster monitors internet activity by students and staff as it happens, including: web browsing; viewing news groups; downloading audio, video and data files; and quantity and size of emails, both sent and received. Administrators such as school principals or IT managers can easily generate reports, including: who is spending the most time browsing on the internet; which websites are being visited most often and by which PC; the cost of time spent and data downloaded from the internet; and time of day usage trends.

CommSoft’s NetMaster can also block access to objectionable material. The blocking feature is designed to be quick and simple to implement, without intruding on network performance. Without any change to the way NetMaster connects to a network, administrators can specify categories of sites or individual sites that users may not visit. “Monitoring and blocking are effective tools but they are not a solution on their own,” adds Jonathan.

“Schools need to have policies and procedures that encourage awareness and acceptance of responsible internet use amongst staff and students. The Ministry, through the Internet Safety Group, provides advice, guidelines and other material for schools to enable the development of a culture of safe use.” “We recognise that many schools don’t have budgets that allow them to purchase every piece of software they’d like, which is why we’ve decided to make NetMaster Office free to schools,” says Martin Searancke, NetMaster Marketing Manager.

NetMaster Office features: Simple to use and interpret: designed for non-technical people Flexible ‘exception reporting’ to highlight unusual internet use Sniffing technology meaning no network overhead NetMaster will track absolutely everything No restriction on the number of PCs on a single subnet: perfect for schools.

Schools interested in a free copy of NetMaster Office should call the Ministry of Education on 0800 CALL ICT (0800 225 542) or 0800 NETMASTER (0800 638 627).

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