Icon has provided a wide range of consultancy services to Protex Limited during the development of the Protex Open Filtering Engine (ProtexOFE) and the associated management scripts:

  • web-site setup, design and management
  • software development, testing and bug resolution (bash, Perl, Python, HTML, php, JavaScript, MySQL)
  • application installation and support (Squid, Apache, MySQL, Postgres, etc.)
  • server installation and configuration (Centos, Ubuntu)
  • Proxmox Virtual Environment
  • porting to Virtual Server configurations (VMWare, VirtualBox, LXC)
  • on-site and remote server management
  • first and second and third line customer support
  • URL list management and ongoing development including handling user change requests
  • content phraselist tuning and development
  • user testing (i.e. piloting new versions of Protex pre-release)
  • software integration with third party suppliers and resellers
  • writing/editing marketing material for the website and print
  • writing/editing case studies, whitepapers and technical documentation
  • conference presentations
  • technical workshops

Protex offers a flexible and affordable filtering system that puts schools in control of what their pupils can access on the Internet. Staff and pupils have different filtering profiles – an essential feature for teachers – and subscribing to the Protex service enables schools to tailor the filtering to their own policies.

Protex web filtering is unique in being designed specifically for schools with continuing teacher input and testing. Its list management system allows any user to request changes online. Protex was designed to be very highly scaleable. It runs with the same code base on a single server and on clusters of high performance computers for the largest Local Authority handling the web requests for tens of thousands of users.

All Protex systems are managed centrally, providing automatic list updates and software upgrades. Log analysis can provide schools and Local Authorities with important management information in the drive to protect users, data and systems.

There is more information about Protex on their website.