Protect your company. Let your employees browse the internet knowing that your IT policies are implemented – inside as well as outside the company network.

Netfilter the story

Unwanted web surfing hurts more than just your company’s bandwidth. Illegal or copyrighted files and offensive materials can hurt your corporate image, offend other employees and pose a legal or financial liability to that company. In the worst case, the CEO is at risk of jail time. The other main reason for installing this technology is to tighten security by not allowing employees to go to unknown sites that could contain adware, spyware, Trojans or other kinds of malware which can compromise network security. Companies don’t have the time or the staff to monitor all sites its users go to. Nor can they block sites that may be useful to certain departments and not others. Blocking certain categories has helped companies tremendously but some people still can find
ways around it.

Both Internet usage and bandwidth consumption are optimized in this manner – and the company saves money and experiences increased productivity. By combining fast image processing with text and behavior analysis, NetOp Netfilter distinguishes safe from unsafe contents with almost perfect accuracy. NetOp Netfilter does not require constant updates to cope with the many new offensive sites that are introduced to the Internet each day. With the output from a unique combination of image analysis, text analysis and a historical behavior analysis fed into an artificial intelligence decision engine, NetOp Netfilter analyzes web
content in real-time and applies rules on the fly. And it does it 100% dynamically, with no need for updates.

NetOp Netfilter analyses web content in realtime without consulting a black list. It uses a dynamic engine and can block existing web content as well as those of tomorrow. It is the only filter that utilizes image, text and behavior analysis in combination. Most sites with offensive contents have a high image-to-text ratio. NetOp Netfilter analyzes those fast and with high precision. The 2 fold text analysis automatically evaluates the total text at a site and not just individual words. With the output from the unique combination of image, text and a historical behavior analysis fed into an artificial intelligence decision engine Netfilter correctly blocks inappropriate sites while nonoffensive sites are allowed.

How it works
Every time an employee browses the internet, all communication goes through the NetOp Netfilter which works as a proxy server. This is analyzed and categorized by NetOp Netfilter using analysis based on a combination of: text + images + user behavior (e.g. if user often searches for pornography, MP3’s
etc.) + artificial intelligence to evaluate a page. This allows the administrator to proactively implement rules based on the company’s IT-policy. Those rules control the access to internet resources using internet filtering software. NetOp Netfilter is therefore a strong tool for companies that want to make sure that their IT policies are enforced, and not just words. Also use NetOp Netfilter to get the full picture of the internet traffic with its statistic reports.

Image Analysis:
Netfilter is one of the only filters that utilizes image analysis. Most pornography sites consist mainly of images. Therefore, Netfilter uses its high precision and fast image analysis to analyze and block pornographic images. By examining many features in an image such as shape, skin and faces, Netfilter correctly blocks pornographic images while innocent images are allowed. The image analysis is linked to the sensitivity filter and text analysis.
If the filter is set to Low or Normal and the text analysis doesn’t find any pornographic words, the image analysis will not start. If there is one or more pornography words, the image analysis will run. If the filter is set to High, the image analysis will always run.
Artificial Intelligence:
Because of the complexity in analyzing images, Netfilter has developed and trained an artificial neural network to mimic the human brain’s ability to correctly distinguish pornographic from innocent images.
Text Analysis:
Netfilter also analyses the text on-the-fly in order to provide an even more precise solution. This is a 2 fold analysis that automatically evaluates the total text at a site and decides if the URL is appropriate or not. Words and sentences can have a 2 fold meaning and Netfilter handles this complicated matter on the fly. Many languages are supported including English, Spanish, German, French and Nordic. Included in the analysis is page setup and PICS labels for maximum precision.

Who can benefit
1. Companies with mobile workers
Accountancy Banks Insurance Enterprises etc.
When employees surf the internet (either for business or private purpose) and have laptops outside company network it creates security risks. This can lead to introduction of malware on the endpoint and in the company network. This can lead to security issues and in the worst case total system break down. Any issue relating to this will have costly impact. HR in almost any organization has company policies they need to enforce. Some will only have written policies and no tool to enforce them. They know that some employees are breaking the rules (more than others), but they do not have a way to measure and/or prevent/limit this. Companies in this segment may already have a content filtering installation. This is most likely based on blacklists and such product will always be lacking the latest updates since inappropriate sites are constantly created or changed and they will not be blocked. This underlines the benefit of having a dynamic content filtering tool.

2. Companies with confidential personal data
Accountancy Banks Consultancy Governments Healthcare/Hospitals Insurance Municipalities - Police Departments
For public and private companies that have much confidential personal data stored, it is important that they give the signal to the surroundings that they do protect this data. Those companies cannot live with the risk of data being corrupted, destroyed or leaked. If that happens, the public will lose trust in them, and this trust is vital. It will impact their reputation and in the worst case it could mean the end of their business. HR in almost any organization has company policies it needs to enforce. Some will only have written policies and no tool to enforce them. They know that some employees are breaking the rules (more than others), but they do not have a way to measure and/or prevent/limit this. Companies in this segment may already have a content filtering installation. This is most likely based on blacklists and such product will always be lacking the latest updates since inappropriate sites are constantly created or changed and they will not be blocked. This underlines the benefit of having a dynamic content filtering tool.

3. Offer public service at a quality level
Libraries & Internet café
Often a library lets users get free access to a PC with an internet connection. The users do not feel ownership of those PCs, so they don’t care which sites they browse. The same situation applies to Internet Cafés despite the fact that users normally pay to use those computers. When they have paid they don’t care anymore.

Solutions:
Non business surfing will be minimized.
Protection against malware and other dangerous software when employees are surfing the net - outside or inside the company network.
Inappropriate sites are not allowed. Downloading of non related business files is minimized.
Written policies can be enforced. This helps to protect employees from breaking the company policies.
The company decides the level of enforcement of the policies when the employees are working outside the company network and using the internet.
Protection of laptops against malware and other dangerous software when outside company network.
Limit the risk for introducing malware and any other potential dangerous software in the network when laptops re-enter the network.
Easy maintenance of implemented policies

Summary

• A tool to enforce the internet policy
• Increases efficiency and reduces risk
• Very easy to use, and no constant updates
• Superior combination of technologies
• ROI
• Protect company image
• Reduce non company related Internet usage
• Secondary shield against – spyware, spam, malicious code etc
• Releases bandwidth for business use