NetOptima – world’s first statistical pornography filter launched

(I-Newswire) June 8, 2007 - India, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad… 8th June 2007: Internet penetration is increasing day by day and people fast moving from the 'stone-age' dial-up to the always on and super-fast broadband connections across the country. What used to be the realm of the techies is now within reach to everyone – women, kids and grandparents alike! For almost every urban Indian, access to the Net is never far… neither from office or home, or both. And so are the bad things available online. So accessible is pornography that it is almost impossible to avoid it. Internet – which was supposed to be fuelling the pursuit of knowledge, is now eating away at the fabric of our society and our school kids, teenagers and youth are falling prey to it.

Pornographic sites are dominating the Net. Porno web sites create a wrong impression about sex and sexual relations in society. Several sites offer 'free' porn content, many also offer Dialers, Emails, Chat Rooms, etc. with explicit content. The tech-savvy younger generation knows a lot more about computers and net. "What can we do?" is the question, most ask. The recent MMS Scandals and Orkut episodes bring to light the situation, which is almost changing from bad to worse.

In context of the misuse of net at workplaces, it is estimated that at sixty-two percent. employers, employees surf for sexually explicit materials. The two most frequent search keywords on the Internet are 'sex' and 'pornography/porno'. Seventy percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during working hours. With the advent of the e-age, the scene in India is no different. The cost of this productivity loss is enormous.

With a mission to curb the misuse and protect the future generation from the cyber onslaught Hyderabad-based six years old IT Research Company Drishti Systems Pvt. Ltd. launches NetOptima N101, world's first statistical pornography filter. A simple plug n play hardware device for your network that blocks all the pornographic content whether it is in websites, emails, documents, blogs or other community websites such as Google groups, Yahoo groups, etc. The launch of Drishti Broadband, probably world's first porn-filtered broadband service was also announced.

Speaking at a press meet in city today Mr. Anil K. Chandra, Head – R&D of Drishti Systems P. Ltd. said, "NetOptima N101 provides an effective way for IT and security managers to deter the abuse of Internet privileges. The product is increasingly essential to businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and other "connected" organizations." Targeted at Educational Institutes (schools, colleges, universities, training institutes), Corporate & Government organizations and ISPs, NetOptima N101 is priced at Rs.65,000/- per device. There are no additional subscription charges. One device can optimally support about 500 computers surfing the net. This device is ideally suited to schools, colleges, institutions, corporate houses etc.

According to IDC, the premier source for global market intelligence, 30 percent to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is unrelated to business. According to SexTracker, "70 percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9 to 5 workday." Nielsen/NetRating has determined that 21 percent of all adult sites are accessed from work. Meanwhile, 70 percent of employees surveyed by NFO Worldwide admit to viewing or sending adult-oriented e-mail at work.

Software based filtering programs are used in these situations. These filters are either keyword based or URL based or a combination of both. All outbound Web requests have to be handed off to the filter, which then performs a lookup to decide whether to block or allow them. If the request is passed, the filter redirects it back to its host, which then passes it along until it reaches the Internet. This process is reversed for inbound traffic. All of which slows down the surfing. They also have problems with other software/browsers, i.e. work error-free with only select software/browsers, hog memory and result in non-availability of bandwidth. Domain/URL based filters do not block new websites. Keyword based filters block all websites containing keywords. E.g. sensex.in and news sites, incorrectly.

NetOptima is a result of 3 years of research led by Drishti Systems R&D Head Mr. Anil K. Chandra and his team comprising of Rajesh RR, Abhishek Bhalerao, Srinath K, TV Murali Krishna Gupta, Madhu Kumar Raparthi & Rajitha Chandra. NetOptima N101 is a dedicated hardware platform unlike the parental control software generally available in the market. Based on Pattern based filtering method, the NetOptima N101 analyzes the web page while it is being loaded for pre-defined patterns and blocks pornographic content. NetOptima uses patented (pending) algorithms to statistically identify the document based on various characteristics of the page, in addition to keyword distribution, frequency and multi-word patterns.

The intelligent pattern-matching algorithm is used to analyze the web content. The research team at Drishti has created a database of patterns to determine the nature of content. This intelligent technique correctly identifies pornographic and non-pornographic content. Though the above technique of analyzing the data is power intensive, the fast search algorithms designed by Drishti, which are capable of making 25 million searches in 2.3 seconds, make it happen in a jiffy. NetOptima N101 thus makes surfing better and faster compared to surfing using software-based filtering at the user end.

It employs some of the best document parsing, pattern matching and word searching algorithms developed in-house by Drishti Systems. Though the default setting leave nothing to be desired, NetOptima is completely configurable for those users who would like to set stringent / flexible settings. NetOptima analyses the data packets at network level and reads the data page by page. Hence, it will block only the pages that contain pornographic material and not the entire website. It also blocks P2P (peer-to-peer) traffic, services such as eDonkey, eMule, KaZaA, FastTrack, Gnutella, Direct Connect, BitTorrent, Extended BT, SoulSeek, etc.

With one of the best searching and profiling algorithms, NetOptima N101 filters pornographic content on resource crunched embedded system. Ported on MIPS32 266 MHz with 32 MB memory, N101 can filter peak of 4 mbps and average of 2 mbps bandwidth. It can even be ported on bigger machines to achieve traffic up to 100 mbps too. N101 boosts of a very high hit ratio (more than 99%) and almost zero false negatives. Highly stable, robust and scalable architecture, NetOptima will prove to be a boon for businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and other "connected" organizations. To know more about NetOptima, Drishti Systems can be contacted on 040 64546853 or one can visit website: www.netoptima.in

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Drishti Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Plot 9/10, 1st Floor, Samrat Colony, West Marredpally, Secunderabad - 500026. India.
Tel: 091-40-64546853

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Drishti Systems Pvt. Ltd.