Kids get into all sorts of things they shouldn’t get into online. And we know parents want to protect their kids from what’s out there. They want to know that what they’ve set up is effective, up-to-date and always working.

Today we’re introducing a new service called FamilyShield and it’s the absolute simplest and most straightforward way for parents to protect kids from the bad stuff online. There is no complicated set up and no software to install on your computers.

FamilyShield is different from — and better than — the majority of parental controls software choices parents are faced with. For starters, ours is free to use. And when set up on your wireless router, FamilyShield does more than block adult content on computers; it blocks it on Wi-Fi devices like the iPod Touch or the Nintendo DS and on video game consoles like Xbox and Wii. In addition to blocking adult content, FamilyShield also blocks proxies and anonymizers, which are how enterprising/tech-savvy kids often get around parental blocks.

In addition, because FamilyShield leverages the OpenDNS content filtering system, the list of sites being blocked is constantly updated, 24/7. These updates happen automatically, without requiring any changes on the user’s end.

Last but not least, because it runs on the global OpenDNS network, it will make your household Internet faster and overall more reliable. With the OpenDNS perfect 100 percent uptime record, you won’t have to tolerate annoying, intermittent Internet outages anymore. This, of course, is in stark contrast to parental controls software that is often known for slowing down your Internet experience.

Why did we launch FamilyShield? For about as long as OpenDNS has been around, we’ve heard demand from you, our users, to provide a pre-configured version of the service that automatically blocks adult content. The idea has been submitted to IdeaBank, the part of our community where anyone can suggest new OpenDNS features and functionality, a few different times. (For example, here and here.) We aim to give you what you want and FamilyShield is just that.

How does FamilyShield work? Much like how OpenDNS Basic works, you just follow our simple two-step instructions to configure our special FamilyShield IPs on your router. Unlike OpenDNS Basic, there’s no account to configure, no complicated settings to customize, and no downloads or software to install. Even if you have a dynamic IP address.

FamilyShield’s IPs are:

208.67.222.123
208.67.220.123

What does FamilyShield Block? The service blocks pornographic content, including our “Pornography,” “Tasteless,” and “Sexuality” categories, in addition to proxies and anonymizers (which can render filtering useless). It also blocks phishing and some malware.

If you’re using OpenDNS Basic today without any filtering and think FamilyShield looks just simple and straightforward enough for you, just follow the simple instructions to point to the new IPs. But, if you use OpenDNS, love OpenDNS and know of a family who could use a parental controls service that also makes their home network faster, let them know about FamilyShield.

There are just ten days left to nominate yourself, your friends, and your favorite IT people for the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year Awards.

We’ve already seen a high volume of nominations, particularly in the Flying Solo and Shoestring Budget categories. It’s clear that there are many SysAdmins out there who are making great things happen with limited help, and a limited budget; these two categories are seeing some of the stiffest competition.

Categories where there have been fewer nominations (fewer nominations being equal to a better chance of taking home a cash prize) include :

• Best Disaster Response Award
• Neat Freak Award
• Large-Scale Deployment Award
• DevOps Award
• And the late addition, K–12 Award

It’s easy to send in a nomination. Just email awards at opendns dot com with the award category in the subject line. Follow the instructions for the category in your submission.

And once you send in a nomination (or two!), make sure to RSVP for our System Administrator Appreciation Party on July 28 in San Francisco. Cash prizes, celebratory parties, and even some potential giveaways — who loves SysAdmins more than we do?

While some may associate July with 4th of July, summer vacation and BBQ, here at OpenDNS, July means one thing, and one thing only: System Administrator Appreciation Month.

Along with running a contest to find the SysAdmin of the Year, we’re also celebrating SysAdmins at our fourth annual System Administrator Appreciation Party. This year’s affair will be held at DNA Lounge in San Francisco’s SOMA district (375 Eleventh Street) on July 28th, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Meet the rockstar engineers from OpenDNS, enjoy ice cold beer and delicious eats, pick up some OpenDNS merch (t-shirts, anyone?) and feel celebrated just for being a SysAdmin. C’mon — you’ve earned it!

You can register here (for free) for the party; once you let us know you are attending, make sure to pass on the invite to your friends. And if you aren’t a SysAdmin, feel free to let your office’s IT folks know.

For those who might travel from out of town, feel free to
email me directly if you need ideas for places to stay while in San Francisco.

We hope to see you there!

At last week’s Workshop on the Economics of Information Security — an annual conference held at Harvard — new research (PDF) was presented showing the link between pornography and malicious online practices. When the study’s researchers surveyed adult websites, they found that many were aimed at “manipulating and misleading a visitor to perform actions that result in an economic profit” for the Web site. Free sites used these tactics 34 percent of the time, while paid sites used them 11 percent of the time. What types of tactics are we talking about? According to the study, methods include:

1. Javascript catchers that hijack the user’s browser, making it difficult to leave a site.
2. Blind and hidden links that prevent an address from being displayed in a web browser’s status bar. This can be used to mask malicious activities, like cross site scripting or cross site request forgery attempts.
3. Redirection scripts that redirect users to different websites. This occurs on a server, so there’s no way for a user to know it might happen until they click.
4. Malware that triggers malicious behavior including “code execution, registry changes, or executable downloads.”

In addition to misleading activity, the level of malware found on adult Web sites was surprising to the researchers too; almost 3.5 percent of adult websites had this type of behavior, compared with previous studies that found less than one percent as malicious. Spyware and Trojan downloads were the most popular types of malware.

The good news is, it’s simple to block adult content and pornography with OpenDNS. In a couple of steps, you can nip the issue in the bud by blocking content you know causes issues on your computer and network. To block adult content, navigate to the Settings page and select the network you wish to manage. You’ll then see a Choose Your Filtering Level option under Content Filtering. To block all adult content, make sure to block the following five categories: Adult themes, Nudity, Sexuality, Pornography, and Tasteless.

Since we already block malware for all OpenDNS users (Enterprise users get more comprehensive coverage), blocking pornography is just one more step you can take to protect users on your network from coming in contact with malicious tactics online.

Just a reminder that we’re hosting a webinar tomorrow to outline the benefits of using OpenDNS in an educational environment. Summer break also presents the perfect opportunity for K-12 and post-secondary schools to test OpenDNS without impacting access to the Internet or key learning tools.

In the webinar, we’ll discuss how easy it is to deploy OpenDNS at schools, achieve CIPA compliance necessary for some federal funding, and manage network settings and Web content filtering preferences from our online interface. OpenDNS doesn’t require any appliances, so you can be up and running across multiple schools in minutes. Learn more about how OpenDNS makes educational networks safer, faster, smarter and more reliable during our short 30-minute webinar tomorrow.

Date: Tomorrow – Tuesday, June 15

Time: 11 AM PDT – 11:30 AM PDT

Sign up here, and don’t forget to invite your colleagues!

Hi! I’m Laura, the newest addition to the OpenDNS team. You can find me here on the OpenDNS blog, on our Twitter account or Facebook page or in a variety of other places helping to get the word out about OpenDNS.

Speaking of getting the word out, in the past several days, we’ve made two exciting announcements:

1. We kicked off the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year Awards with six categories.
2. We announced that one in every three public grade schools in the US is using OpenDNS.

As we talked about OpenDNS in schools and the incoming award nominations, a collective lightbulb went off — we should offer a way to celebrate SysAdmins who work in K-12 education, too! Today we’re adding a new category to the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year awards: a K-12 Award.

K-12 Award

Achieving CIPA compliance, blocking unsafe and inappropriate Websites and protecting students are all in a day’s work for this SysAdmin. Tell us how this SysAdmin deftly balances the demands of school boards, educators and students without breaking a sweat. Draw inspiration from the other categories to show how this SysAdmin earned an A+.

How to nominate a SysAdmin for this or any other award: To submit yourself or a fellow SysAdmin, just email awards at opendns dot com with the award category in the subject line. Follow the instructions for the category in your submission.

Today we announced that one in every three public grade schools in the US is using OpenDNS. One in every three. This news just a couple months after we shared that 1% of all Internet users in the world are running OpenDNS.

Why is it significant that more than 30% of all US K-12 public schools are using OpenDNS? Because schools are held to the highest standard when it comes to keeping the Internet safe, and it’s a task that network admins at schools don’t take lightly. Yet at the same time, they’re often given very small budgets for technology and, unfortunately, purchasing and maintaining a content filtering appliance can eat up that budget fast. OpenDNS provides content filtering delivered through the cloud, with no appliances to mess with, and in many cases saves tens of thousands of dollars per year.

We saw lots of adoption among K-12 schools and school districts early on, and it’s only become stronger over time. Today we’re proud to report that the largest school districts in the US trust OpenDNS, including Baltimore City Schools, Detroit Public Schools and San Diego Unified School District — to name just a few. Chances are, a school district near you is using OpenDNS, too.

Know a school district that isn’t using OpenDNS yet? Send an IT professional or administrator this pdf. Do you run the network for a school but aren’t using OpenDNS there yet? Read up on OpenDNS here and here. Have a question? We’re all ears.

Oh and psst — special summer pricing on OpenDNS Enterprise just for K-12 schools. Contact our sales team for details.

Here at OpenDNS we’re all about the SysAdmins. While we’ve made it our mission to ease their lives, we also look for ways to thank them for keeping our networks up and running. One way we do that is by celebrating System Administrator Appreciation Month (July) with all of the related events we put on, including the party (details coming soon – it’s gonna be good this year!).

To kick things off early, today I’m excited to announce the 2010 System Administrator of the Year Awards, the largest contest of its kind and the best way to give a SysAdmin that you respect the cred they deserve. There will be one winner selected in each category by a panel of esteemed judges, including OpenDNS System Administration team members George Patterson and Mack Nagashima, and CEO (and occasional SysAdmin himself) David Ulevitch. Winners in each category will receive a prize of $50, and from all entries the judging committee will choose one winner that stands out among the rest as the official OpenDNS SysAdmin of the Year. We’re still working on details for the Grand Prize, but we aim to please.

The deadline for entries is midnight June 29. Winners will be announced shortly thereafter.

Without further ado, the categories:

Best Disaster Response Award

A hurricane, a fire, an earthquake. A datacenter meltdown. Something that would have caused business operations to shut down completely, if it weren’t for this SysAdmin. Like a knight in shining armor, he or she managed to keep the network up and running. Your submission should include details about the disaster and how the SysAdmin handled it.

Neat Freak Award

SysAdmins take pride in documentation and organization of cabling, wiring and racks. Wow the judges in this category with photo evidence showing that your SysAdmin is the neatest and most organized of them all.

Shoestring Budget Award

This SysAdmin works wonders with a seriously tight budget. Tell us about the SysAdmin with the craziest buildout done on the cheap. We need details for this submission – tell the judges specs, total cost and what kind of awesomeness it powers.

Flying Solo Award

Even with a team of talented operators, SysAdmin’ing is not easy work. But when flying solo it can be downright heroic. Regale us with a (true) story of the heroic SysAdmin who saved the world (or did something awesome) to save the day (or company) all by his or herself.

Large-Scale Deployment Award

Some jobs are too challenging to comprehend, but not for the SysAdmin who wins our Large-Scale Deployment Award. Tell us the story of a SysAdmin who has managed a massive amount of infrastructure from their diety-like fingertips with finesse and elegance. Tell us how big the deployment was, when it was built and what some of the impressive metrics it offered were (pageviews, megahertz, memory, rendering, etc.).

DevOps Award

Often, the most successful SysAdmins are the ones who work well with others. Large websites like Flickr attribute much of their success to the close collaboration between engineering and operations. Share a success story of your own where the SysAdmin’s collaboration played a key role in a successful engineering project. Tell us when this happened, who was involved, and how you know it was successful.

How to nominate a SysAdmin for an award: To submit yourself or a fellow SysAdmin, just email awards at opendns dot com with the award category in the subject line. Follow the instructions for the category in your submission.

Good luck to all! We’re rooting for you!