Lightspeed Systems®, the leading provider of online safety solutions for K–12, is ending 2025 with a series of major advancements to its industry-leading Lightspeed Filter™ platform—focusing on transparency, security, and responsible AI. These new features help districts gain insight into web access decisions, enforce policy with greater nuance, and protect student wellbeing with intelligent, low-friction safeguards.
“At the core of these updates is trust,” said Rob Chambers, EVP of Product at Lightspeed Systems. “Districts need filtering to be smarter, more transparent, and more secure, especially as student behavior shifts and digital content evolves faster than ever.”
AI & Visibility: Meet “BOB,” Your New Filtering Sidekick:
BOB (Bot of Bots), Lightspeed Filter’s new assistant helps IT teams understand filtering decisions with instant clarity. With BOB in Access Check, admins can look up any URL and instantly see:
• The assigned category (and if it was changed locally)
• Whether it’s allowed or blocked
• What policy decision led to the outcome
• And most importantly: why?
Districts need filtering to be smarter, more transparent, and more secure, especially as student behavior shifts and digital content evolves faster than ever.”
— Rob Chambers, EVP of Product
“BOB surfaces the logic behind every filtering decision—what rule applied, what policy triggered it, and whether anything’s been overridden,” said Chambers. “It’s become one of the most useful tools we’ve given IT teams to validate access and quickly resolve issues.”
Real-Time Risk Monitoring: A Unified Security Insights Dashboard & Telemetry Report:
In addition to BOB, Lightspeed has introduced two powerful visibility tools: a real-time Security Insights Dashboard and a comprehensive Telemetry Report. Together, they give districts a full-spectrum view of filtering behavior and device health.
The Security Insights Dashboard gives districts a centralized, real-time view of web-based threats like malware, proxies, and domain-sharing. It surfaces spikes, patterns, and high-risk users or domains so districts can act faster and adjust policy with confidence.
Complementing this, a streamlined Agent Telemetry Report gives admins visibility into device-level agent health and version coverage, ensuring deployments stay current and protected.
Increased Safety with Smart Image Blurring:
This fall, Lightspeed also rolled out smart image blurring, a machine-learning feature that blurs images based on category or policy without fully blocking the site.
This provides a more nuanced approach to content management, supporting classroom engagement while still shielding students from inappropriate visuals, especially in gray-area categories like social media, news, or web results.
These enhancements continue Lightspeed’s mission to deliver not just filtering, but meaningful oversight, smarter automation, and policy-aligned protection that districts can trust. With these updates, Filter becomes more than a safety tool—it becomes a strategic layer in every district’s digital ecosystem.
Also Read: The End Of Serendipity: What Happens When AI Predicts Every Choice?
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