Recent revelations about the extent of paedophile material on the
internet raise serious issues about corporate web and e-mail
policies, argues Simon Moores.
I'm worried. That's not unusual, but on this occasion the success
of Operation Ore, the police anti-paedophile sweep, is raising all
manner of unpleasant implications, which stretch beyond its natural
constituency of ageing judges, politicians and rock stars.
Without a doubt, Operation Ore has been a big success for the
police in the continuing fight against paedophile crime. And in
some respects, with more than seven thousand names to investigate,
it's almost too successful, pulling away already stretched
resources from an increasingly organised wave of internet-related
crime, which rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of
the dotcom bubble.
Ore is, however, just the tip of an iceberg of incalculable size, a
successful sting on one website among countless thousands of
explicit sites, which can be found within seconds of loading any
one of the dedicated search engines.
As a consequence, the true figure for people in the UK involved in
the downloading and distribution of paedophile content alone might
be nearer 70,000 then 7,000 and perhaps even higher still.
What worries me from a business perspective is that all kinds of
illegal and explicit sites increasingly thrive on broadband - the
Korean experience - and, with broadband still in the minority among
domestic users, this suggests that a hidden quantity of potentially
illegal traffic, paedophile or otherwise, is passing through
company networks.
It's a theory, of course, rather like the assumption that our
universe is full of invisible "dark matter", but with so many
organisations having very little in the way of a content filtering
policy, it's difficult to argue otherwise.
My own guess is that the public sector is more likely to face
compromise than the private sector which, in my experience, is a
little more diligent as regards what goes in and out of the
corporate network.
Most organisations are more concerned about managing their e-mail
than monitoring their content but even then, too many organisations
have little or no sensible policy in place.
Last year, in a piece of research, I found that scanning electronic
mail for malicious attachments is a near-universal procedure among
administrators (93%) but that only 42% were then tackling the
growing problem of spamming with 43% monitoring communication for
signs of obscene or inappropriate content.
Just before Christmas a survey by e-mail management specialist KVS
indicated that 41% of public sector IT managers don't have an
e-mail management policy in place or haven't reviewed e-mail
back-up policies at all, in advance of meeting compliance with UK
legislation which takes effect in 2004.
The good news then, if there is any, is that the country is facing
a 60/40 split between those organisations that have a handle on
their network traffic and their e-mail management and those that
don't.
Naturally, there are serious implications for those that don't, if
in the light of Operation Ore, my own pet theory on the hidden
presence of the Internet's own "dark matter" is even partially
close to the truth.
What's your view?
Are corporate systems unwittingly
disseminating sinister material?
Tell us in an e-mail >>CW360.com reserves
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Zentelligence
Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of the futurist writer, broadcaster and Computer Weekly
columnist Simon Moores.