Mapping Solutions onto the Parental Controls Infrastructure
Five categories of common ISV and ISP/portal parental-controls aware offerings are readily apparent:
- Standalone client application. Examples are email clients and media players. Although media players have Internet-facing risk and some have specific services, Windows Parental Controls primarily promotes logging and restrictions on playback activities only to minimize library impacts and logging noise to administrators.
- Client/server solutions. The most prominent examples are instant messaging solutions.
- ISP suites. These are collections of client/server solutions and client applications, often integrated in a single client user interface. Note that most of these also provide most or all functionality by using browser access, crossing over into web-only solutions.
- Web-only solutions. Accessed through browser. Examples are web-based email and instant messaging functionality. Access to these may be blocked by appropriately populated web filter categories.
- Firewall-like solutions. Provides filtering at the network stack level, and potentially other operating system restrictions.
Recommendations for implementing compliant solutions for each category are specified in the following table.
Category | Logging | Restrictions settings | Restrictions enforcement | Web Content Filter replacement | Use of extensibility link for logging and settings access |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
"Stand-alone" client |
Required on client |
Required on client |
Required on client |
N/A |
Required, will be exe. May simply invoke app UI navigation |
Client/server solution |
Required on client if not performed by server |
Required on client if not performed by server |
Required on client if not performed by server |
N/A |
Required, will be exe |
ISP suite |
Required on client if not performed by server |
Required on client if not performed by server |
Required on client if not performed by server |
Recommend using WPC filter, but allow replacement if robust for multi-user |
Required, will be exe |
Web-only solution |
Recommend performing on server |
Recommend performing on server |
Recommend performing on server |
N/A |
Recommended. Expose server logging and settings by using exe |
Firewall-like solutions |
Required on client |
Required on client |
Required on client |
Recommend using WPC filter, but allow replacement if robust for multi-user |
Required, will be exe |