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News Archive- 13 Jan 2006

Deloitte and PixAlert Auditor lead the fight against illicit images in the workplace with launch of new image audit service

13 January 2006: Deloitte has launched a new illicit image audit service, which uses advanced image scanning and audit software from Dublin-based PixAlert, to detect, manage and remove illicit images across corporate IT resources from desktop PCs and notebooks, to network servers and storage devices.

Using PixAlert Auditor, this new Deloitte service will help Irish organisations to protect employees from exposure to the increasing spread of illicit images in the workplace. It will also help to enforce computer use policies and comply with growing legislation that puts Irish companies and their directors at risk from criminal or civil prosecution if they do not take steps to manage these illegal or inappropriate images.

A recent survey into the ‘Use of Information and Communications Technology in the Workplace’ (published by IBEC in September 2005) found that almost 60% of companies reported cases of computer misuse. Of these cases, the main types of misuse were inappropriate emails – both internal and external – and illicit images. Over 40% of companies have needed to take action against employees and in many cases this led to dismissals - related mainly to illicit image usage.

“Deloitte is taking a lead in better protecting its clients from new and emerging image liability threats and helping them to report on behaviour and system weaknesses more efficiently,” said John Nolan, CEO at PixAlert. “PixAlert Auditor drastically reduces the time required to rapidly and securely audit for inappropriate and illegal images across organisations, automatically generating the required case files, audit trails and comprehensive management reports.”

“Companies need to protect their brand, reputation and business interests and have a moral and legal requirement to provide a working environment which is safe from physical and psychological harm,” said Gerry Fitzpatrick, Partner at Deloitte. “Yet few organisations are equipped to prevent the growing and pervasive threat of illegal or inappropriate digital images. We believe that existing control systems can not cover the breadth of this threat and are also not routinely tested or included in most IT audits. This product helps our professionals to efficiently analyse these threats and provide a broader system audit and risk analysis for our clients.”

PixAlert uses powerful, high-speed image analysis software to scan over 80 image and file formats from JPEG, GIF and BMP to Word, PowerPoint, email (PST) and ZIP files. Suspect images that transgress a pre-defined threshold are automatically presented to an administrator in a user-friendly gallery along with the machine and user name, date, time and program.