SurfControl has been replaced with Secure Computing for categorization, and the 97 subcategories are not mapped to other names. An added benefit is that under the new system, a site can be in multiple categories- allowing for more accurate categorization.
First, Astaro has a well-written contract with Secure Computing- we have no concerns about the impact of the potential acquisition by McAfee.
I believe Astaro's choice of content filtering partners through the years has been validated by the market. Astaro has chosen premier partners and the market has seen them as valuable properties.
Since everyone is upgrading, you will need to review the categories and sub-categories. We could not convert the old to new mappings completely for updated systems, so there are several sub-categories unmapped after update. Please review the attached list of categories, corresponding subcategories, and unmapped subcategories- and configure your systems as appropriate.
Fresh installations from 7.302+ ISOs (available soon) will have all Sub-categories mapped to the existing 18 categories.
Maybe it's me, but what is the advantage of having a web site/page listed with multiple categories? I am allowing Education/Reference and blocking Online shopping and have a number of teaching web sites being blocked because of the multiple categories listed on one page. Outside of whitelisting any ideas on how to solve this or will this be addressed?
The advantage is in better fine-tuning, for example a news website which also hosts streaming media could be categorized as both "general news" and "internet radio/tv". If you allow news but block streaming media, this added granularity can give you better control over what content is allowed on your network.
I can understand why some may like the feature as you describe it, but many sites that educators use are dual listed when only one page may have the shopping feature so the entire site is now blocked. We agree to disagree, that said, is there a way other than white listing sites to get around this?