Parental Control Review 2018 – Fortinet FortiClient
Parental Control Review 2018 for Windows
| Release date | 2018-07-20 |
| Revision date | 2018-07-20 |
| Test Period | June 2018 |
| Number of Testcases | 2000 |
| Online with cloud connectivity |  |
| Update allowed | |
| False Alarm Test included | |
| Platform/OS | Microsoft Windows |
Introduction
Amongst other things, parental control software allows parents to filter out websites that their children can see, in order to avoid the children being exposed to materials the parents consider unsuitable, such as pornography, gambling or weapons.
Parental Control Certification
AV-Comparatives provides certification for parental control software. In order to be certified, a product must block at least 98% of pornographic websites, have no more than a few false alarms on child-friendly websites, and have no severe unresolved bugs (or design flaws) discovered during the review. A certification is valid for one year and vendors can apply for certification once a year.
Tested Products
Test Procedure
We tested the effectiveness of the parental control software against 2,000 websites with potentially inappropriate content for children. We chose the appropriate settings for a 9-year-old girl, which would block sites relating to pornography, gambling and weapons.
Review
We have included a short review of the product in this report, so that parents have an idea of what the product is like to use and what other features it has. Please note that certification is not affected by any of the points mentioned in the review, and is based solely on the technical test results described above.
Testcases
The 2000 URLs were broken down as follows:
- Pornography: 1,600 sites displaying pornographic images and text
- Gambling: 200 sites which allow online betting
- Weapons: 200 sites selling or advertising weapons online
We additionally tested 100 obviously child-friendly websites, such as lego.com, to check for false positives.
Test Results
| Block Rate | |
| Adult | 98.0% |
| Gambling | 84% |
| Weapons | 52% |
| False-Positives | 0 |
Product Reviews
Fortinet FortiClient
About the product
Fortinet FortiClient is intended as a security client for businesses using Fortinet security services, although it can be used free of charge on home computers. As well as business-specific features such as secure remote access, it also includes functions such as antivirus, firewall and web content filtering (parental control) that would be valuable to home users. You can decide which components to install, so you could set up just the web-filtering component, but use e.g. Windows Firewall and a third-party antivirus solution.
Which versions of Windows does it work with?
Windows 7, 8.1, 10
What parental control features does it have?
FortiClient includes a web filter, which allows parents to block or allow specific web pages and broad categories of website. There is also a log of blocked pages, so that parents can see which blocked sites their children have tried to access.
What categories of material does it block?
Most of the website categories that parents might want to hide from their children are contained in the Adult/Mature Content group, as shown in the screenshot below. However, to ensure that all unsuitable sites are blocked, parents should ensure that the Potentially Liable group is also selected.
Installing and configuring the product
FortiClient is installed by downloading and running the installer file. You need to select Additional Security Features, Web Filtering on the Setup Type page of the wizard:
Blacklisting/whitelisting individual sites
Clicking Add in the Exclusion List section of the Web Security settings page lets you allow a specific web page in a blocked category, or vice versa:
What does the child see when a page is blocked?
Help
Clicking Help, Technical Documentation allows you to see/download the product’s comprehensive Administration Guide. Amongst a wealth of information about the business-related functions there are simple instructions for using the web-filtering component:
Verdict
FortiClient provides a very straightforward means of filtering the web content that children can see. Parents should note that settings apply to all users of the computer. When setting up the product, care needs to be taken to choose the components to install, to ensure that there is one firewall and one antivirus program on the computer.
Award levels reached in this Parental Control Review
Fortinet FortiClient for Windows reached the above requirements and therefore receives the 2018 AV-Comparatives Approved Parental Control Award.
| Fortinet | APPROVED |
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AV-Comparatives
(July 2018)