[Raiden]

Blocking websites via IT Policy can this be done? Our cuurent enviroment has our bes users on apretty fast reliable internet link, could i possibly block certian websites from being browsed using IT policy? Which is the best way of doing this except Webmail on the ISA server?

[CanuckBB]

Use the IT policy to disable all browsers except the BlackBerry browser.

ISA can be supplied with either a white or black list of web sites. It's a losing battle. I would suggest you get something like SurfControl on your ISA server.

[audit]

I Second Surfcontrol. It's a great product.

[akg]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry 9000: BlackBerry8300/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

What if you don't have ISA Server and aren't going to get it? We are a small business and that's not going to happen. Are websites controllable via IT policy? Surely there should be a black/whitelist on there.

[audit]

Difference between should be and what is available is the keywords there.

[hdawg]

Originally Posted by Raiden

Blocking websites via IT Policy can this be done? Our cuurent enviroment has our bes users on apretty fast reliable internet link, could i possibly block certian websites from being browsed using IT policy? Which is the best way of doing this except Webmail on the ISA server?

This isn't done with IT Policy but rather with setting "Pull Authorization" to True under your MDS Connection Service Access Control setting. Then you'll need to go to your Global Settings > Access Control and then you need to configure Pull Rules and URL Patters.

a URL pattern could be: *.mycompany.com:*/*

[CanuckBB]

Originally Posted by akg

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry 9000: BlackBerry8300/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

What if you don't have ISA Server and aren't going to get it? We are a small business and that's not going to happen. Are websites controllable via IT policy? Surely there should be a black/whitelist on there.

SurfControl has a standalone version. Costs around $5-6K per year. They maintain the lists of sites. You can allow, ban, warn, all sorts of reporting.

Keep in mind that, especially in litigous USA, you are one user going to whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov away from a hostile work environment lawsuit. Web filtering software is just cheap insurance.

They have a 30 day trial. why not load it, allow everything and look at the reports. You may be chasing a ghost.

[Ugg]

On the ISA Server question, there are "freeware" alternatives out there. They'll still cost you a piece of tin + your time, of course.

On the BES itself you can define very complicated rules about how individual site requests are handled. I'm sure that you could use that to direct requests to blacklisted sites to a proxy server that doesn't exist (or one that does but says only "your request has been logged - now go away"). However, I bet that it'd take longer to set up rules this way than to configure an external proxy server that the whole business can use.