What does iShield™
do?
Image Blocking - iShield™ can block any porn image displayed
in Internet Explorer with a customize replacement image.
URL Logging - iShield™ records the URLs of any web-pages
browsed that it has determined to be pornographic. The iShield™
administrator can view a log of such these pages.
Popup Warning - iShield™ can trigger a warning message
when it detects a web page which contains pornographic material,
so as to let the end-user know that the incident has been
captured.
How is iShield™
different from URL Filtering Software?
URL filters only restrict access to known pornographic web
sites and so are dependent on the list of known web-sites
being up to date. This dependency is important since there
are in the region of 100,000 new pornographic web-pages being
placed on the Internet each day. iShield does not use any
lists of known pornographic websites, instead it analyses
each web-page as it is loaded finds pornographic images and
then blocks them.
How does iShield™
detect explicit images?
iShield™'s locates areas of interest in each image using colour-analysis.
Next a series of techniques are applied, namely contrast normalization,
skin-colour analysis, texture-analysis, edge-detection, blob-detection,
shape analysis, brightness-flow analysis and face detection. The
results of these image processing techniques are fed into a neural
network to make a decision on the image. Next the text is recovered
from the web-page and analysed. The results of the text-analysis
and image-analysis are combined to make an overall decision.
What does iShield™
do when it detects explicit images?
When iShield™ detects suspect material being displayed on
a browser it automatically records the event in a log file that
can be reviewed by the administrator. Next, if the image blocking
mode is switched on, then iShield replaces pornographic images with
a non-pornographic one.
Can I customize iShield™'s
protection level?
iShield™ has a control panel accessible via a password. This
control panel allows the administrator to i) turn iShield™'s
detection engine on and off; ii) select the degree of pornography
about which an image will be blocked; iii) select which of the three
modes of operation, namely: Active Block, Active Warn and Passive
Mode is active; iv) view the report log containing the URLs of pornographic
web-pages visited by the end-user; and v) change the administrator
password. Note that in the first mode of operation, the Active Block
mode, images are replaced with a non-pornographic image. In the
second mode, Active Warn mode, a message box pops-up when pornography
is detected to warn the user that they are being monitored. In the
third mode, the Passive Mode, the incidences of pornography are
recorded but no action is taken to warn the end-user or block any
images.
Will iShield™
block images that are not pornographic?
Whilst iShield™'s detection engine is designed to reduce the
risk of false triggers, occasionally iShield™ will block non-explicit
images in part due to the inherent subjectivity of what constitutes
pornography. To alleviate this problem the pornographic level above
which images are block can be manually adjusted from iShield™'s
control panel.
We've already got a firewall
…
Firewalls are perfect for stopping external access to your systems
but don't and can't control, monitor and report what is being viewed
using the web-browser.
Do I have to take out my
existing blocking software?
No, we don't encourage this. Your existing software provides a basic
level of protection. Our software adds a much higher degree of monitoring
and control - within the web-browser itself.
