SandBlast protects kids’ Chromebooks from threats

Chromebooks are quickly becoming the go-to low-cost laptops for preschool to primary-level students. But with increased access to the internet comes problems ranging from security threats to cyberbullying.

Israeli software company Check Point has developed a Chrome extension called SandBlast to mitigate these threats facing school-aged youngsters. The extension not only beefs up cybersecurity on Chromebooks, but it also tackles the bullying problem by blocking keywords and issuing alerts to students before they post offensive content.

“SandBlast for Education monitors and controls browsing activity by using advanced, dynamic and highly accurate URL filtering capabilities with granular whitelisting and blacklisting capabilities,” said Bruce Chai, head of threat prevention at Check Point Asia. “It blocks explicit search results by enforcing safe-search capabilities in Google, Yahoo, Bing and YouTube, and can block access to other search engines.”

A study in the US found that nearly 90% of students aged 4 to 12 had witnessed their peers get cyberbullied, while over 90% of children aged 8 to 16 had been exposed to internet pornography.

The SandBlast technology differs from leading competitors by providing protection against threats where a signature is not available and protecting students even when they take their Chromebook outside the school’s defence network.

“Looking at schools who have deployed Chromebooks for their students, we found that there was a gap in how those devices were being secured against the evolving threats landscape,” Mr Chai said. “Using technologies which were first developed and proven at protecting large-scale enterprises, we have since adopted these same technologies for protecting students.”

The program also protects against phishing attacks and malicious files, and automatically cleans up downloaded documents with potentially harmful content.