You probably already run Anti-Virus and other security tools which prevent threats to your PCs. Kept up-to-date and with regular scanning, these tools provide good protection against most on-line security threats. However, whether it's because of cost, apathy, lack of knowledge or all of the above many thousands of our customers don't have adequate security protection for their PCs and home networks. The consequences of these oversights can range from mildly annoying through to expensive and disastrous. We're now asking our customers to help us trial one possible solution. We've been working for some time to find good answers to these problems, and as a result a number of new services are planned for coming months. We're pleased now to announce the free trial of the first of these, Safe Surf from Aladdin eSafe, and we're asking for volunteers to help us put the system through its paces. The Safe Surfing system works transparently with your connection, and 'cleans your Internet feed' of web threats, spyware, Trojans, viruses, worms, Phishing attacks, and more. The equipment that does this is hosted within our network, which means you don't need to install any new software or applications on your PC whatsoever. It also works without impacting the speed of your connection or general web surfing experience. Most importantly, because only one central server needs to be kept up up-to-date and customers never need to perform updates or upgrades themselves, you are always protected from the latest Internet threats as soon as they are discovered. The fact that we host the service also means your data never leaves our network and it is never passed to a third party. As well as web security, the system also provides a connection level Parental Control service which will enable you to block categories of websites such as pornography, drugs, gambling etc. During the the pilot the parental control service will be limited to only offering a number of predefined categories, more details which can be found when you subscribe to the trial. The final live service will offer a complete Parental Control Agent which will enable users to:
- Define multiple profiles for parental & security control
- Have multiple users on a single or multiple PCs at home
- Define their own exclusions (white-list, blacklist)
- Define web browsing time control and limitation
- Run an online re-mediation service
- Run private activity reports
A full description of all the future extra services planned can be found in the trial forum, which will become visible on the community site to trial participants once they have registered. As this service is in its beta stage and operates quite transparently, we will be reliant on the feedback from our customers to properly assess the product. Feedback regarding your browsing experience following registration to the service is essential, and we will therefore invite you to fill in a survey before registering for the trial and another at the end of the trial. This will assist us in improving the final product offering offer and adjusting it to your specific needs. We think the Aladdin Esafe solution achieves what no one else has so far (although we won't know for sure that it's the right solution for us and our customers until we've completed the trial of course), and we are pleased to be the first UK ISP to offer this system to our customers. Trial Details and Frequently Asked Questions Who are Aladdin? Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: ALDN) were founded in 1985 and have become a well renowned global provider of security solutions. Aladdin has offices in 10 countries and currently provide solutions to ISPs and enterprise businesses all over the world. Why are we launching network based web security? We believe that ISPs are in the best possible position to help provide customers with solutions that protect their online security, and we see it as an area where we can use our technical ability to offer a better product than anyone else can. How does the parental control system work? There are different categories dependant on the type of protection you require, please see the table at the end of this article for details. Will it cost me? The trial will be completely free, but the product will most likely be sold as an add-on once it is fully launched. It will most definitely always be an opt-in service, even if it is offered for free, and no trialists will be automatically charged for the service even once it is launched. When is the service due to launch? If the trial is successful we will start work to make this a part of our feature set. The public phase of the trial is scheduled to last at least a month, after which we might expect to see a full product by the end of the summer. Will I still need Anti-virus and other security software? Yes, we certainly don't think that this system (during the trial especially) can replace anti-virus software completely, although that isn't our goal for this product anyway. What we are asking members of our community to help with is putting the solution through it's paces to just how good it is at protecting our customers network. Parental Control Profile Categories
For more information and to register for the trial, please visit our trials page at http://trials.plus.net
Please note that support for the trial will be Monday - Friday 9.00am-5.30pm.