Family-safe public WiFi across each concourse and food court
Your shopping centre WiFi covers the concourses, food court, cinema foyer and car park, used by thousands of shoppers a day, many of them children. Shield gives that public network a family-safe policy and strips ads so pages load faster at peak. Behind it, the management suite, security office, car park systems and building controls run on threat-first rules.
Guest WiFi policy
- Adult contentBlocked
- GamblingBlocked
- Safe Search on Google, Bing and YouTubeEnforced
- Streaming at busy timesLimited
Allow list
bookings.examplemenu.exampleBlock list
rival-venue.exampleWhat is at stake
A public network as busy as a small town
Children in the common areas
School holidays fill the food court with children on the free WiFi, and the centre's name is on the network.Saturday peak
Thousands of phones join at once on a Saturday, and ads and trackers eat into bandwidth meant for shoppers.Building systems online
Car park barriers, ANPR cameras, digital directories and building management systems reach the internet, often on networks set up by contractors.
How Shield fits
Public areas, management and building systems apart
- Public WiFiFamily-safe categories, Safe Search and ad blocking across concourses, food court and car park.
- Management suiteThreat-first rules for centre staff, with Microsoft Entra ID groups setting what each team can reach.
- Security and car parkCCTV, ANPR and barrier systems behind a relay, kept to the domains they need.
- Digital signageDirectory screens and advertising players on allow lists, so they reach only the domains you approve.
See everything Shield stopsShopping centres WiFi on Purple Access
Ads, trackers and bloatware load on every page
Ads and trackers stripped before they load
Proof
Safe for families, fast at peak
- 500%
- faster page loads, once ads and trackers are stripped out
- 62%
- fewer DNS queries, once ads and trackers are blocked
- Friendly WiFistandard met by Shield's filtering for family-safe public WiFi
- IWFbar met by Shield's filtering, set by the Internet Watch Foundation
FAQ
Questions we hear from teams like yours
Can tenant units have their own policy?
Yes, where tenants sit on your network. Each SSID, VLAN or site carries its own policy, so a tenant's back-of-house network can run threat-first rules while the public WiFi stays family-safe. Tenants who run their own broadband can take Shield standalone.
Will it cope with a Saturday crowd?
Yes. Shield answers the DNS lookup each phone makes anyway, with a median response under 30ms worldwide. Stripping ads and trackers means fewer queries and less data, and Purple's own measurements show up to 62% fewer DNS queries and up to 44% less data used.
Do we need hardware across the centre?
No. You point the centre's router, firewall or DHCP at Shield, with no appliance to install. A relay is used where building systems sit on segmented VLANs and you want each device's internal IP in reports. Shoppers install nothing.
Can the policy change for school holidays or late opening?
Yes. Policies run by time of day and day of week, and you can switch a stricter policy on for school holidays from the dashboard. Late-night cinema crowds can get their own rules without anyone touching the network.
How do we show we take shopper safety seriously?
Shield's filtering meets the Internet Watch Foundation bar and the Friendly WiFi standard, and Purple holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials. Scheduled PDF reports show what the public WiFi blocked each month, which gives you evidence for your board, insurers and tenants.
Other industries
Retail
Family-safe shopper WiFi across the estate, with ePOS, handhelds and head office on threat-first rules.Big-box retail
Family-safe shopper WiFi on the shop floor, with ePOS, scanners and self-checkouts on threat-first rules.High-street retail
Family-safe customer WiFi for independents and chains, with tills and card readers on threat-first rules.
Decide what your network reaches, free for 30 days
Tell us which networks and sites you run and who is on them. We map a policy to each one: staff, guests, students, residents and IoT. Then point one network at Shield and see what it stops for 30 days, before you pay anything. Running change control? We plan a pilot on one site with your team instead. No hardware to install.
- We map your networksA Purple expert maps your networks, your venues and the people on each, and answers your questions on bypass, outages, data handling and integrations.
- You get a policy for each oneStaff, guests, students, residents, IoT and paid tiers, each with the policy it needs.
- You prove it, then get your tailored quote30 days free on one network, or a pilot on one site planned with your team, then Shield priced standalone or as an add-on to your Access plan.
Your policy map
Tell us your networks. We map a policy to each one.
A Purple expert comes back with a policy for every network and group you run, from the team that has run content filtering since 2012 and runs WiFi for 80,000+ venues in 90 countries.