Pornography has nowhere to hide in the workplace

BioObservation Systems presents the Pixalert Product Suite. The core aim of the product suite, is to detect the presence and location of pornographic image content in the workplace.

BioObservation Systems presents the Pixalert Product Suite. The core aim of the product suite, is to detect the presence and location of pornographic image content in the workplace.

The modern office provides many gateways for pornographic image content to enter and be reproduced (often inadvertently). Firewalls and other blocking technologies are not the complete solution, pornography can easily migrate its way through any such approach once weak links have been established and exploited.

The web is the biggest source of multimedia content, attempts to restrict usage, will significantly impact on company efficiency. Typical media content sourced from the web includes, web images, documents (doc and pdf), video, archives (zip files) etc

The advent of e-mail filters have restricted the access of undisguised pornographic content (i.e. attached images and video). However these are bypassed simply through embedding images or video in word documents, presentations or spreadsheets.

FTP from external sites can be restricted, but again, at what cost to an organisations productivity.

There is almost unfettered access to the office via portable storage media (floppy, zip, CDs etc). The advent of large volume storage media (e.g. CD-RW -- up to 700Mb) can allow the movement of large volumes of pornographic material into the office and its subsequent unmonitored storage and retrieval on the organisations machines -- even via the office intranet).

Blocking and filtering technologies often can have a significantly negative impact on the efficient use of both Internet and e-mail technologies within the workplace, often severely curtailing the benefits of both.

Our approach to pornography detection is different. If a user views visual pornography on a desktop machine within the facility, the system administrator will be alerted and provided with a copy of the image, via the office network. This is irrespective of what software is used to display the image and what file format the image is stored in. Armed with this information, the administrator can conduct a full scan of the users storage media to insure that improper and illegal material is not being stored in the office environment.

Our two new products, Pixalert Monitor and Pixalert Auditor, facilitate this powerful new approach in clamping down on the problem of
pornography in the workplace.