Astaro SpyderWeb SchoolGuard Education program
I am very excited to announce to you that Astaro Asia has officially launched its SpyderWeb SchoolGuard Education program. This program makes available to primary and secondary schools across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) our advanced and fully comprehensive Web Security subscription for no charge! (Yes, no charge). This is Astaro’s way of giving back to our community and help protect our children in an increasingly on-line educational environment.
Many schools in our region either cannot afford to adequately protect their children or are diverting limited educational funding to expensive software or subscriptions . Worse, most schools are using ‘freeware’ or consumer grade solutions in an attempt to save money providing poor and insufficient cyber protection for their students. We find this situation totally unsatisfactory and with your support we would like to do something about it.
This is a bold yet genuine initiative from Astaro. It provides an opportunity for our partners to engage with ALL schools in the region and provide a community service while also hopefully identifying some additional commercial opportunities for the partners and for Astaro.
This is a fully functional Web Security offering that is Enterprise grade. It provides Web Filtering, Web Blocking, P2P control, IM control, AntiVirus protection, Malware protection and our Essential Firewall security just to name a few of the many advanced features. This is an offer that has never been made to the education market before and is a significant step forward in providing the tools to protect our Children.
To read the datasheet of what's on offer click here
What is it exactly that Astaro are offering?
Astaro is making a significant offer to enhance the network security of primary and secondary schools around the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan). The offer is that Astaro will provide, free of charge, security software we call ‘Essential Firewall’ and a 3 year subscription to protect your kids (and staff) when they are surfing the net, aptly called ‘Web Security’. This is offered to schools to help them provide a safe internet experience to all their students. These days the internet is a vital part of our kids education but in retrospect our kids are exposed to threats such as viruses, malware, inappropriate content as well as allowing contact with people who may have criminal intentions. Astaro wants to help strike this balance by allowing safe internet usage and weeding out all the bad content by stopping these threats at the gateway of the internet before it reaches students computer.
The product we are offering is our full suite of Web Filtering which includes blocking selectable categories of Web usage and internet sites as well as AntiVirus and Malware scanning. The Web Security also offers you the ability to control peer-to-peer (P2P)applications such as yahoo messenger, MSN Messenger etc in addition to other P2P applications. It will also provide Instant Messenger blocking and Peer to Peer blocking and control. It also allows Web Filtering of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook if desired. This is no lightweight product, it’s an extremely comprehensive and robust security solution and all the advanced features are impossible to list here.
2. Are there any limitations to the product?
No. The product we are offering is the full enterprise version of the Web Security software that many leading companies in Asia and around the world use to protect their staff and their networks. We have not cut out any functionality or restricted the product in anyway. Your children will get the same robust security that enterprises pay for and use every day. By using the Astaro product you will be providing industry leading security to your students. This is not available as ‘Freeware’ this is a product being actively used commercially around the world.
3. What hardware do I need to run the software?
The software runs on standard “X86” architecture. Basically a normal PC that runs windows. You will need to dedicate a computer to this security function. You down load it on a PC and Astaro – SchoolGuard Web Protection Program (available in selected countries in Asia Pacific only) the PC you use becomes a “gateway” for all internet traffic. If you don’t have a PC, Astaro offers a selection of appliances to run the software at special prices.
For you reference the minimum hardware requirements are:
- 1.5+ GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 20 GB hard disk
- Bootable CD-ROM
- 2 or more network cards
Best performance results are experienced when using hardware specifications at or beyond: Intel Dual/Quad-Core CPUs >2GHz, 2GB RAM. Please check our Hardware Compatibility List for recommended and tested server systems and components.
4. Why is Astaro offering their Web Security subscription for free to
primary and secondary schools? Are there any catches, contracts or
commitments?
This is our way of giving back to the community. Astaro already offers its products to Home Users for free. We recognise that Education plays a vital role in our society and often has limited budgets especially in developing countries in the Asia region. As members of the community our management also find it very important that we protect our children from the threats on the internet and currently many schools are using consumer grade, low end or sub standard products to achieve this. Some are using no protection at all! We are also parents at Astaro and we find this unsatisfactory. Protecting our children online is an expensive and difficult process and is diverting already stretched education funds. We also hope that parents, staff, teachers and of course the students will see how good our technology is and that may help us as we seek business in the commercial market place. Somehow we hope this will be a win-win for everyone. There are no catches in this initiative. You do not need to sign any contracts or commit anything now or in the future. You can stop using the product whenever you choose and you can use it unrestricted for as long as you like. You will have access to upgrades and new versions as well.
The only restrictions we have placed on this initiative are:
1. That it will be licensed for primary and secondary school institutions only and should not be used in a commercial environment.
2. Participating schools will have to register and go through a very simple verification process by Astaro or an authorized partner. This is to ensure our software is being used as this program is intended and to avoid abuse of this offer.
3. No one may charge for the product or benefit commercially from it in any way. By this we mean that re-sellers, technology partners, data centres, service providers and the like may not charge you for the use of the Essential Firewall and 3-Year Web Security Subscription. You also you may not sell the product to any person or entity.
5. How do I inquire?
You can enquire easily by sending us an email to info@sgen.com.au or calling us on 02 9467 8877. If you would like further information on the product or detailed product specifications please also contact us.
6. What support do I get?
You will receive on line support or support from your local re-seller or partner. You will have access to the same support provided to our Home User or you can simply call the re-seller or partner that gave you the product.
7. How do I proceed from here if I would like my copy of the software
The product is not available for download. A partner or re-seller can give you a copy of the product. You only need to provide the partner or re-seller with a purchase order (at Zero Value) and they then contact Astaro and we will process the license keys for you. It’s simple and quick. We need this documentation so that we know the product is being used for the purpose it is intended. If you install the software you will have a 30 day license key anyway which will give us time to send the new necessary activation keys to you. Without an official zero value order from an education institution we cannot provide the partner with the license key.
8. Is the software fully licensed?
Yes. Astaro own the software and all the intellectual property and we will issue a full license with full rights to use the product. There are no legal complexities.
9. Who is Astaro anyway?
You may not have heard too much about us. We are one of the industry’s best kept secrets! Astaro is a German based Internet and Network security company. We started in 1999 and we specialise in providing Internet Security (UTM – Unified Threat Management) solutions to hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. Every second of every day hundreds of thousands of customers rely on Astaro security solutions to protect their network. We are the leading European UTM Security Providor. In 2009 we opened our third regional headquarters in Singapore and have been expanding through the region ever since. We now have offices in Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines and Singapore. Many market research companies rank us 4th largest in our market space. Senior analyst companies in our industry also rate us as a technology leader with a strong vision. Our products have won many global industry awards.
We are privately owned and very focussed on the communities in the markets in which we operate. We are a major contributor to the “open source” community and an active member. We provide our products to Home Users for free to help them protect their home networks and we also provide a business grade firewall product free for businesses to use.
10. If I need additional security features what do I do?
Astaro offers a wide range of security products and features so please call us or speak to your preferred partner about what we can offer. We have a special education discount available but we suggest you try the Web Security first and then we can talk about additional offerings you may require.
11. If I don’t have hardware what do I do?
The Astaro solution runs on any standard PC hardware. This hardware needs to be dedicated to this task so any ‘old’ PC you have will be generally OK. You only need a CD/DVD drive and two network cards to install it. If you do not have hardware Astaro can offer dedicated network hardware at a special education price to you, or you could simply acquire a PC from somewhere to run the solution. The choice is easy and it’s your choice. Please remember though that the PC will be dedicated to this task and can’t be used for any other purpose. Whatever information you have on that PC will be lost and the operating system (such as Windows) will be deleted.
Please see question 3 for the minimum Hardware Requirements.
12.What happens after three years?
Call us and we will gladly renew your subscription.
13.Who gets access to this offer
We need to stress that this option is available only to primary and secondary educational institutions only and available only in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan).
14.How long is this offer valid?
It is our intention to keep this offer going indefinitely but this will depend on how many schools take up our offer and the load it puts on us. So initially we are going to make this available until the end of Q1 2011 with an intention to extend beyond this date. It’s important that we can provide the right level of support for the schools and our partners.
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