Ridding the Workplace of Porn

Are you worried about content that may be entering into your company through the email system?

Bellevue-based Content Technologies, yesterday launched PORNsweeper, the first solution for organizations seeking to prevent unacceptable images, including pornography, entering or leaving their e-mail network

The software is the first to allow organizations to prevent what they consider unacceptable images, including pornography, being e-mailed into or out of their networks.

It has been developed to help organizations enforce their e-mail policy to protect themselves, and their employees, from legal liability, sexual harassment, loss of productivity, negative corporate reputation and network congestion issues.

“PORNsweeper empowers organizations to establish and enforce their own policies on unacceptable images as part of a wider content security solution to protect their business and network integrity,” says Chris Heslop, Content Technologies’ Worldwide Marketing Director.

The product works by scanning the contents of image files attached to e-mails or embedded within e-mail attachments. It then conducts a number of tests to conclude the likelihood that the file contains a pornographic image.

Recent cases in the news highlight the fact that organizations are now seeing the distribution of pornography by e-mail as a major business issue to address. Dow Chemical fired 50 workers and disciplined a further 200 for distributing pornography and other unacceptable material by e-mail, and here have been similar cases this year at the White House, the New York Times, Xerox Corp, the UK Houses of Parliament and the Orange phone company

“As recent cases show organizations, such as Dow Chemical, Orange and the White House, are increasingly concerned by the level of e-mail porn being circulated,” says Heslop. “Not only are they open to litigation for its content, but many staff find its distribution offensive and an example of sexual harassment. Corporate reputations are at risk – once lost they can be extremely hard to rebuild.”