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Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

ajd
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎05-01-2008

Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

I found this interesting article on the PcPro website, doesn anyone know if PlusNet developed this any further?
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/80944/plusnet-begins-screening-test-for-internet-traffic.html
4 REPLIES 4
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

That's a good question.
I'll see if someone has a better memory than me?
The_10th
Grafter
Posts: 1,093
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎08-04-2007

Re: Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

On the face of it I presume a very welcome advancement but would route this play into the hands of the government's plan to monitor illegal file sharing?
dvorak
Moderator
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Registered: ‎11-01-2008

Re: Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

The date is showing as 2005, so if it was still going thought it would be part of the package specification?
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Ianwild
Grafter
Posts: 3,835
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Plusnet Trial of real-time screening of Internet traffic

We got quite a long way down the road with Streamshield, but ultimately it wasn't something we could deploy to customers for various reasons. We loved the idea though, and I've been working with another company who offer a similar service to a number of ISPs globally. This one is looking VERY promising (although it's a bit more expensive than Streamshield, so probably will be a service we need to charge something extra for).
At the moment we are trialling this system with the Usergroup. In the next few weeks I'm going to open up that trial to community site members who will be able to put the system through it's paces and let us see how well it scales up. If that's successful then I would expect this to be a service we can launch in the summer. I'll provide lots more details when we are ready.
Internet Security isn't best handled at the PC level in my opinion. Threats need to be stopped before they get to that point, and a ISP network based solution is best for that if you can find one that is powerful enough. It's certainly something we think will provide a lot of value to our customers anyway. As well as removing the annoyance that spyware and other malware causes, I think the whole discussion about security is likely to become more of a high profile issue as more people find their privacy being breached as a result of preventable malware infections.
It isn't an answer for everyone of course, and some will always want to retain complete control over the security of their own network. Even if we can get absolute trust in the nature of a system like this, I can see some people not wanting to go there. That's fine, but in any case I don't see solutions like this (which are serious security focussed systems with no overlap into other areas) changing the game when it comes to government thinking or other developments happening in the industry right now.
Ian