[3444] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: configuring a site to ban porno/violence www access...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Per Weisteen)
Mon Nov 4 04:30:06 1996
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 08:29:00 +0100
From: Per Weisteen <Per.Weisteen@hda.hydro.com>
To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Henry Lim Chee Wee wrote:
>
> I have a question. How well do you manage a "maximum possibly secured
> network" with respect to restricting internal users from accessing
> 'banned sites' from the Internet?
>
When we a couple of year ago gave users general access to The Net we
were forced to implement such a scheme. At that time our only viable
alternative was Webtrack from Webster. ( see http://www.webster.com/ )
Seems to be a modified CERN caching server containing control lists for
16 different categories of banned material. They also have a plug-in for
Netscape's Proxy server.
Today we are in the process of abandoning this. We might have to double
or triple our access capacity though. Our users complained too much
because they were occationally banned from sites that contained
legitimate information, information they needed in their work. We found
that Webtrack lists often banned whole sites when they only needed to
ban parts of that site. But then how can anyone possibly hope to scan
and successfully categorize all Web sites on Earth ?
Is this Web security ? Well in a broad sense it is. At the time we
implemented this a lot of journalists were hunting for front-page
stories on how the Net was used as a porn distribution media. The last
thing our management wanted was the picture of an employee, in his/hers
office anonymously showing screens filled with pornographic material, on
the front-page of some newspaper.
--
Per Weisteen !Internet consultant, Webmaster, Postmaster
Norsk Hydro !Email: Per.Weisteen@hda.hydro.com
Box 200, 1321 Stabekk !Phone: (+47) 2273 8227
Norway !Web: http://www.hydro.com
