UK SIC - Appropriate Filtering and Monitoring Definitions: What every school, college and MAT needs to know

The UK Safer Internet Centre (UK SIC) has published its appropriate filtering and monitoring definitions for 2024. This guidance is designed to help schools and providers understand what's required of their filtering and monitoring systems to ensure the highest level of protection for students. Below you'll find a summary of the key updates schools, colleges and MATs need to know. 

Background

The UK SIC has been publishing filtering and monitoring definitions for schools since 2016. Combining the organisation’s expert knowledge with data from public consultations, UK SIC’s appropriate filtering and monitoring standards are valuable resources for schools to refer to when assessing their systems and strategies. The key updates for 2024 are as follows:

Appropriate filtering

Update 1: Illegal Content Online - Updated to clarify that “filters for illegal content [...] cannot be disabled by anyone (including the system administrator).”

Detail: Concerns were raised in the public consultation about the potential practical issues of prohibiting administrators from disabling certain filters, but the UK SIC reiterates that UK law “unequivocally prohibits access” to illegal content. 

Update 2: Inappropriate Online Content - Hate speech has been added, defined as: “Content that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.” 

Detail: A distinction has been made between discriminatory content and content that constitutes hate speech. Schools are advised to ensure that their filtering system manages both of these types of content.

Update 3: Filtering System Features - Contextual Content Filters has been expanded to ensure that schools consider “the extent to which (http and https) content is analysed as it is streamed in real time to the user and blocked.”

Detail: This includes AI generated content, for example, being able to contextually analyse text and dynamically filter the content produced by ChatGPT.

Update 4: Filtering System Features - Deployment is now included: “Filtering systems can be deployed in a variety (and combination) of ways (e.g. on device, network level, cloud, DNS). Providers should describe how their systems are deployed alongside any required configurations and/or limitations.”

Detail: As educational settings have varying requirements and preferences, schools may want to consider a range of deployment options, to ensure their specific needs can be met.

Appropriate monitoring

Update 1: Monitoring Content - Updated to clarify that “safeguards for illegal content [...] cannot be disabled by anyone (including the system administrator).”

Detail: The UK SIC also recommends that, where possible, schools implement enhanced monitoring systems that can alert administrators to any attempts to disable critical filters. 

Update 2: Monitoring Content - Hate speech has been added, defined as: “Content that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.”

Detail: A distinction has been made between discriminatory content and content that constitutes hate speech. According to the guidance, “schools should be satisfied that their monitoring strategy or system” covers both of these types of content.

Smoothwall's view

Smoothwall is pleased to see the updated guidance makes clear that schools should be considering how their filtering systems analyse content in real-time. We have advocated for a long time that the only way to provide accurate and safe filtering is to inspect the actual content of web pages as they are delivered to the user. This has never been more important with user-generated content (such as social media and online communities) as well as AI tools, where the domain name and URL do not give any indication as to whether the content is safe or not.

Filtering is about enabling access to as much of the web as possible, to enable students to learn and develop critical skills for their future employment. Real-time analysis is the only way to achieve this. Without it, large amounts of the Internet need to be restricted because sites may have both safe and unsafe content within them.

Deployment of filtering systems is also critical to assess, as providers offer a variety of different solutions. These include on-device, network level, cloud and DNS filtering. Each of these has varying levels of ability and technical constraint when it comes to meeting the other requirements of the guidance.

We look forward to helping schools understand this, and choose the right deployment methods to ensure a balance between technical feasibility and keeping children safe online.

Smoothwall Filter is the only 100% real-time, content-aware filter on the market.

Accredited by the UK SIC, it is designed specifically for UK schools, colleges and MATS and offers the highest level of protection for students - enabling them to safely explore the internet in a way that promotes a productive learning experience.