Internet Parenting
Parents, we're living in a brave, new world.
The Internet impacts a child's world-view, and our ability
to parent, more than any invention in modern times. Every family
with children should have some form of Internet filtering and
controls to protect their kids. K9 Web Protection provides today's
Internet Parent with essential tools for this critical challenge. The
Internet is a fascinating place, full of rich and interesting
information. But as a gigantic virtual community, it has "good
neighborhoods", "questionable neighborhoods",
and "downright bad neighborhoods".
As a parent (or simply as
a concerned citizen of this virtual community), we believe
you might want a good set of guidelines about where to go in
this gigantic place. Think of K9 Web Protection as part "guide dog" and part "watch dog",
keeping those in your care away from the wrong parts of town.
With K9, you can decide which neighborhoods are OK to visit,
and which ones aren't. That ability makes a big difference when
you're trying to provide a safe environment for children. K9
makes it easier to let your children explore and learn on the
Internet, while you do what you can to keep them safe.
Product Features
Blue Coat® K9 Web Protection is a content filtering solution
for your home computer. Its job is to provide you with a family-safe
Internet experience, where YOU control the Internet content that
enters your home. K9 Web Protection implements the same enterprise-class
Web filtering technology used by Blue Coat's Fortune 500 customers
around the world, wrapped in simple, friendly, and reliable software
for your Windows 2000 or Windows XP computer.
Blue Coat's unique Web filtering technology divides Internet
content into more than 55 distinct categories. These categories
are stored in the master Blue Coat database, through which we
maintain and update more than eight million ratings of websites
and domains. A Web site will fall into one or more of these categories,
based on the content of the site. To meet your particular needs
and preferences, you can configure the software to block or allow
specific categories.
K9 Web Protection is different from other solutions for the
home in several important respects:
- Service-based filtering -
Blue Coat's filtering database operates as a service. It
receives and rates over 50 million requests every day, making
it the most accurate content filtering database available.
This accuracy is important in protecting your family, given
the Internet's rapid changes and growth. Plus, there is no
database to download. K9 Web Protection won't clog your Internet
connection, get "stale" or
out of date, or slow down your computer like other products
do.
- Dynamic Real-Time Rating™ (DRTR)
- Blue Coat's patent-pending DRTR technology is a very powerful
element in our solution, and is vastly different from the old-fashioned "key
word filtering" that is so frustrating to users. Using
a method of statistical analysis and artificial intelligence
to rate new or previously unrated Web pages, DRTR can determine
the category of a URL on the fly, without human intervention.
However, DRTR only renders a rating when it is confident that
it has reached an accurate conclusion.
We've focused DRTR on
recognizing the kinds of categories most likely to be blocked.
In particular, DRTR is highly accurate in blocking pornography
and other "adult
content" sites. This focus for DRTR is particularly important
because these kinds of sites are constantly - daily and even
hourly - popping up on the Internet, and no static database
can keep up.
- Automatic updating -
Automatic updates of the K9 Web Protection application ensure
that you are always protected by the latest features. For
example, in Spring of 2005, we added two new categories to
our solution:
Spyware/Malware Sources, and Spyware Effects/Privacy Concerns. By electing to
block sites in these categories, your computer's rate of infection by unwanted
software can be reduced dramatically. We have a variety of new features planned,
and your K9 installation will automatically receive updates that include them.
- Efficient caching -
K9 Web Protection is a product from Blue Coat. Blue Coat
is recognized world-wide as expert in high-performance caching
and secure proxy technology. We take advantage of that expertise
in K9, so your Internet experience is as fast, reliable,
and safe as we can make it.
Unlike other filtering solutions, K9 Web Protection
ensures the highest level of protection by building the most
relevant ratings database available. Its effective coverage reaches
more than one billion Web pages. With K9 Web Protection,
you finally have a chance to build a family-safe Internet
experience for your home, simply and easily.
