NetSupport and Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) partner up against child sexual abuse imagery online

NetSupport has become the latest Member of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Their product, NetSupport DNA, a suite of easy-to-use tools for managing and supporting IT in schools, has now incorporated new safeguarding features which have been developed with teachers, safeguarding experts and local authorities to ensure effective safeguarding in schools and campuses around the world.

Now that NetSupport is a Member of the IWF, it will incorporate IWF Keywords into its services. This means that a list of terms associated with online child sexual abuse material will be fed into NetSupport’s product, alongside keywords for radicalisation, self-harm, drugs and more, triggering alerts and matching patterns of activity. This will make NetSupport DNA even safer and help IWF in the global battle against access to online child sexual abuse images and videos.

NetSupport’s Managing Director,Al Kingsley, said: “The increasing use of technology in schools brings with it the responsibility to keep students safe. We recognise the importance of IWF’s work and are thrilled to be working with them to ensure our new safeguarding features in NetSupport DNA are truly effective and support the fight.”

Susie Hargreaves, IWF CEO, said: “It’s great to be welcoming one of our first new Members of 2016. NetSupport is one of a host of our Members exhibiting at BETT education technology show in London this week. Julie and Nicky from the IWF Membership Team have been at their stand this week sharing ideas around working together in our 20th Anniversary Year. I’m looking forward to meeting them myself and hearing about how our services are being used in the schools their working with.”

Ends

Notes to editors:

Contact: Lisa Stacey, IWF Communications Manager +44 (0) 1223 203030 or +44 (0) 7929 553679.

1.    The just under 19,000 Hash List figure relates to the collation of Category ‘A’ images between June 2015 and October 2015. The CSAM was sourced from the Home Office CAID database.

2.    IWF have three categories of CSAM, A, B and C. A is the most severe.

3.    All other figures source IWF, for additional information: www.iwf.org.uk

CAID went live at the end of 2014 and contains indecent images of children as well as hashes of those images. All police forces across the UK are due to be connected and using CAID by the end of 2015.

The Police have shared data from CAID with the IWF in order to assist our work with internet companies. Home Office’s new Child Abuse Image Database (CAID).