Integard - Our winner - Feature packed, easy to configure and well priced.

  Safe Eyes - Great product but high price, limited features and few issues found during testing place it in second place.

  Cyber Patrol - Our Second Runner up - Overall a good product but has less features and is complicated to configure.

  Net Nanny - Well known product but has been surpassed by several other products.

  Optenet - Performs well but lacks the features to make it attractive

  K9 - Free - But only performs web filtering and is only single user.

  FilterPak - Very simple and easy to use but lacks essential features.

  Parental Control Bar - Great Free product, If you are after very basic web filtering only.

  Vista Parental Controls - Decent performance in filtering area but only available on Windows Vista.

  Cyber Sentinel - Does more monitoring than filtering.

Integard is a relatively new filter compared to the other’s reviewed. There was some scepticism before reviewing this filter due to it being relatively unheard of. This scepticism was short lived due to its range of features and effectiveness. Even though it is very new it still has the features and performance of the best filters on the market and as a result has definitely landed itself as one of the top filters reviewed.

No troubles were found during the installation and it was all smooth and self explanatory.

It would be easier to list the features that Integard doesn’t have. Upon installing and using Integard it is quite clear that this filter has all the necessary features to be a great competitor in the content filter industry. Integard has web filtering, chat filtering, blocking and monitoring, email monitoring, program control, time and data limits, customisable blocked and allowed list, personal information protection just to name a few.

Despite the fact that Integard’s feature set is comprehensive, the user interface and layout is well designed. All the system level and user level configuration was separated which made configuration that little bit easier to understand.

Effectiveness

Adult Content      10/10
- During testing no adult content was viewable through a browser. The strict dynamic analysis and the forcing of safe search within the software seemed to block the user at every attempt to view adult content.
Filter Cirumvention      10/10
- By far the best blocking of proxy sites and any attempts to disable, delete or remove the software without the password also affected network activity.
Obscene      10/10
- Once again the obscene content was stopped in its tracks and during testing no unpleasant content was viewable whatsoever.
Crime      10/10
- From the list of crime sites used in testing, none were visible and all attempts to search for criminal related pages were unsuccessful.
Over-blocking      7/10
- Integard was found to over block on several occasions when viewing certain news sites and other ambiguous content. This was resolved by adjusting the filtering sensitivity.

Adjustable dynamic analysis filter sensitivity

Program Control

Time and Data limits

Keyword and personal information list

Adjustable list

License fee covers three computers

Over-blocking occurred a little on the default settings, but we were able to instantly override blocked pages temporarily or permanently allowing the filter to be trained to suit the user’s needs.

Integard easily made its way into the top 3 filters reviewed and has pushed its way through to number one based on the feature list, customisability and overall effectiveness. The only area where Integard even appeared to slip was over blocking but most users would agree that this would be more desired than under blocking and is a fair sacrifice for the filter to function so well in all the other areas. Integard proved itself to be a more than worthy competitor and definitely needs to be taken into consideration when looking to purchase an Internet content filter.