London, UK, 6 March 2000 - GFI is the first company to offer a free five-user version of its Internet access control tool, LANguard. The free download is available from http://www.gfi.com/languard/. LANguard ensures productive use of the Internet, monitors internal traffic for threats, and helps secure the network against unauthorized access. LANguard also includes a revolutionary feature that can prevent web searches for specified words and phrases.

"As organizations increasingly use the Internet as a key business tool, more companies are realizing that they suffer great losses in productivity, time and bandwidth due to employees surfing out of personal interest rather than for work-related purposes. Our offer of a free 5-user version of LANguard will promote the importance of using quality Internet access control technology to save valuable corporate resources," Nick Galea, GFI president announced.

"LANguard prevents unproductive use of the Internet by monitoring users' web use patterns. Use of LANguard can also safeguard a company from expensive lawsuits resulting from employee visits to unsuitable sites that contain pornographic, racist or terroristic content. Through our free five-user offer, all interested organizations can see for themselves how LANguard increases efficiency and productivity with the added benefit of helping to secure the network against internal and external threats."

LANguard enables a company to monitor Internet use on its network and allows the company to block types of external traffic or specific sites that it deems non-productive. This way, through LANguard an organization can set up its own network policy and block types of traffic (e.g., IRC, FTP) as well as preventing access to specific sites.

LANguard includes a unique, revolutionary feature which permits users to visit search engines on the web, but not to search for sites which contain unproductive or objectionable material, according to specific keywords selected by the organization, such as 'sex', 'gambling', 'stocks' or 'sports'.

LANguard also helps protect against internal security threats, such as users accessing confidential data and hacking into shares to which entry is barred. LANguard shows the security administrator which users are accessing specific shares on PCs so that users who have cracked someone else's password can quickly be detected.

Besides, LANguard helps to block all TCP/IP external traffic from the Internet and helps protect the network from electronic break-ins, penetration attacks, hackers, and other threats.

LANguard and includes the following features:

• Provides reports on Internet usage;
• Provides extensive security logging;
• No network reconfiguration;
• No performance loss;
• No client reconfiguration;
• Helps protect against external threats;
• Protects against internal threats (unauthorized access to shares);
• Network monitoring.

Unlike other Internet access control products, LANguard is not based on using a proxy server or a gateway but uses "sniffer" technology that allows it to reside on any machine in the network. Therefore, LANguard is easier to install, deploy and maintain as it does not slow down Internet access, does not involve network reconfiguration and does not require Internet settings to be changed at each workstation.

The free five-user copy is available for download. Pricing starts at $250 for the 10-user version.