Symantec May Have A Way To 'Save Time' Software aims to
block all those sports, adult and gaming Web sites gobbling up employees' workdays
investors.com
"There are lots of ways to waste time on the Web. And
security software maker Symantec Corp. wants to help
employers block out most of them.
Controlling access to Web sites is not a new idea.
Companies lose millions of dollars in productivity as
employees surf sports, entertainment, gambling,
pornography and even day trading Web sites.
Internet users spend nearly 20 million hours per month
on porn sites, which is about the same amount of time
spent on news sites, says PC Data Inc. Another 31
million hours are spent accessing online gaming sites.
And in just one month, access to the Penthouse Web
site by employees of three Fortune 100 companies cost
the employers over $350,000 in lost revenue and
productivity, says Nielsen Media Research.
'Unless measures and policies are put in place, the
reality is that companies' productivity levels are
impacted, leading to lost revenue and reduced
competitiveness,' said Gary Warren, Symantec vice
president.
Symantec has a patent for a technology that can filter
Web sites with a fine-toothed comb.
Most products that filter through Web sites rely on a
database of predetermined words and phrases to block
access to particular sites.
But that process often blocks out many 'good' sites.
Blocking out all sites with the word 'sex' could prevent
a human resources employee from accessing important
data on sexual harassment laws, Warren says.
Symantec's new technology, however, works on the fly
to analyze words and pictures on Web sites - and to
put them in context.
'It can tell the difference between a chicken breast and
a porn site by looking at the accompanying text and
pictures,' Warren said.
Acquired through Symantec's purchase of URLabs in
July, the filtering technology was first developed by
NASA. It also can be used to scan the content of
e-mails and filter out junk mail, says Enrique Salem, vice
president of Symantec's security and assistance
division.
In addition, companies will be able to fine-tune
Symantec's filtering products to block out only certain
kinds of sites and to set up different access rights for
different levels of employees.
In line with its new focus on Internet security,
Symantec will start adding the technology into its
software by year-end, Salem says. Products also will be
available for consumers. Parents can use the
technology to set up access controls for their children,
he says.
For companies, one of the newest problem areas is the
amount of time employees spend day trading, says
Warren. Symantec's technology can filter out trading
sites by searching for fractions and key words such as
'stock' or 'trade' and then analyzing their context.
Harder to track are hate sites that don't always have
easily recognizable key words. The Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles, for example, monitors links to
hate-group sites.
The center has found 2,000 sites that it identifies as
'problematic.' The number of such sites rose 60% in the
last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law
Center.
Without having to rely on a preset database of taboo
words and phrases, Symantec's technology can keep
up with the explosion of such sites on the Web, Warren
says.
'The drawbacks with the database approach are that
the database will always be out of date, and something
will slip through,' he said.
Sales of Internet access control products such as
Symantec's are expected to rise 53% a year, or from $31
million in 1998 to almost $260 million in 2003, says
International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
So far, school districts are the biggest customers,
Warren says.
'A lot of people don't understand the size of this
market,' he said. 'But a school district with a half million
students is a huge network.'
The next emerging market, says Warren, is Internet
service providers, which can offer filtering to both
businesses and consumers.
Symantec also hopes to sell its technology to
search-engine companies and even firms that do
voice-recognition analysis and need to understand the
context of words.
'We expect (the new content security products) to
account for 40%-plus of our revenue in the years
ahead,' Salem said.
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