Clavister, a Swedish company which develops IP-based security solutions, expands its SSP Security Platform with web content filtering functionality. The system prevents users from visiting websites with inappropriate content and ensures that a company’s rules concerning private web surfing during work hours are complied with.

Clavister Security Services Platform (SSP) is the collective name for Clavister’s family of security gateways, management systems and related services.

The Clavister Security Gateway is an extended UTM product family with integrated functions such as firewalling, VPN, intrusion protection, antivirus protection, web content filtering, traffic management, authentication and more. It requires only minimal maintenance, has central administration and extraordinarily flexible configuration possibilities. The family is comprised of five models which cover the entire spectrum from protection of smaller offices all the way up to powerful clustered systems in the multi-gigabit class for network operators.

Content filtering
Clavister’s functions for content filtering are formally referred to as Web Content Filtering (WCF) in its products. WCF is entirely integrated into Clavister CorePlus™, the core of Clavister’s security platform, and is characterised by many intelligent functions, such as self-teaching categorisation of websites, site analysis and much more. The system is regularly updated each hour with thousands of new classifications via the Clavister Service Provisioning Network.

Fine-meshed categorisation
Clavister WCF is built upon a fine-meshed categorisation-based model, where the company itself decides which specific categories are permissible. Among other things, which types of sites may be visited during various times of the day and night may be specified. For example, personnel can be permitted to do private banking only during lunchtime or outside of work hours.

Different rule systems can be applied for different user categories within the organisation. This means, for example, that a municipality can use one setup with rules for school students and another one for its staff.

Analysis and reporting
Via a reporting system, the organisation's web surfing habits can be analyzed and a check can be made on how its IT policy is being complied with in respect to the use of Internet capacity during work hours.

To sum up, Clavister’s content filters lead to increased productivity through limiting private web surfing during work hours, as well as more effective bandwidth usage and a decreased risk of bad publicity as a result of, for example, an employee being caught downloading pornography or copyright protected material such as music and videos.

"In addition to the quite clear advantages including increased productivity, there is also an important security aspect with content filtering, namely that if users are kept away from inappropriate or questionable websites, this will substantially decrease the risk that they will suffer damage from malicious code,” says John Vestberg, CTO at Clavister. “It is unfortunately all too common that companies suffer expensive losses from viruses only because an individual user has been careless and surfed to a website they should have avoided."

Price and availability
A subscription for the WCF service is available for delivery today and costs from EUR 160 to EUR 2800 per year plus VAT, depending on the Security Gateway model. The contract period is either 12 months or 36 months.



About Clavister
Clavister AB is a Swedish privately owned company that develops IT security products. The main product, the Clavister Security Services Platform, is an integrated security platform that monitors traffic to and from networks and protects against intrusion, viruses, worms, trojans and overload attacks. Not only does it protect critical business assets, it also blocks undesirable surfing, requires minimal servicing, has central administration and exceptionally flexible configuration possibilities and thanks to its scalability fits everything from small companies to big telecom operators.

There are also special versions for ISPs, telecom operators and companies that develop managed security services.

Clavister was founded in 1997. The head office and development department are in Örnsköldsvik while sales and marketing is in Stockholm. The company's products reach the market via sales offices, distributors and retailers in Europe and Asia. Clavister also supplies its engineering on an OEM basis.

Clavister have received a number of awards in the international press. For further details see www.clavister.com.