Two information system and electronic security companies at the Infosecurity Europe show are displaying technology they claim can detect pornographic text in emails and elsewhere on workplace and other networked and home computers.
First 4 Internet developed the technology, known as ICA Image Composition Analysis, which can detect and categorize 95 percent of the images it scans at about 5MB per second, the company claims. It also can detect and categorize text, according to the company. First 4 Internet doesn't sell the technology, but instead has licensed its software engine to a vendor for use it in its own information-security system.
First 4 Internet has said of the ICA technology that by integrating combinations of image and context filter core modules, clients "can create filtering solutions offering customers protection against pornographic and offensive content on email, the Internet, chat rooms, MMS, SMS, and other applications in the information-security market sector."
Except that some might also see it as offering the capability of spying on someone else at home or in the workplace. But First 4 Internet insists that the problem of adult content and communications in the workplace carries equally serious implications, legal and otherwise, for the businesses, which have begun using the technology. Those businesses include PixAlert, a British company that is showing what it does with ICA at the Infosecurity show.
"Directors, the company secretary and the managers they appoint are personally criminally liable for up to five years imprisonment if any negligence is found in the area of image and data content management,” said PixAlert in a show statement aiming to illustrate the problem of workplace porn.
"In one recent case at the Department of Works and Pensions, over 2 million inappropriate images were found plus a staggering 18,000 illegal images," PixAlert continued. "Furthermore, 27 percent of Fortune 500 companies have battled sexual harassment claims stemming from employee misuse and abuse of inappropriate images on corporate computers."
First 4 Internet agrees. "In an increasingly litigious society an employer can be accused of creating a ‘hostile working environment’ and be legally liable," the company said when first introducing ICA. "It has been shown that where companies enforce an Acceptable Use Policy and deploy effective best of breed data transmission filtering they are regarded as taking all possible steps to protect their employees."
American businesses with 500 or more staffers and found to have subjected their staffers to "harmful" work conditions – including porn in the workplace – could be held liable for up to $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, while companies with between 200 and 500 employees could be held liable for $200,000 damages.
"Anyone ignoring the porn and explicit email issue risks legal problem, especially now that workplace rules are being amended in ways that could open companies to lawsuits," according to tech news site techworld.com. "This claim is harder to gauge as few large cases have yet emerged in the UK or Europe, despite the predictable legal wrangles in the USA, a country with over a million lawyers looking for work."
First 4 Internet has partnership deals with SurfControl and MessageLabs and planned to announce a new partner during the Infosecurity Show.
