London, UK, 31 January 2000 - GFI today launched a new Internet access control tool, 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.

"Organizations worldwide rely on the Internet as an essential business tool, but many companies recognize that a large percentage of Internet use at the workplace is actually out of personal interest rather than for work-related purposes, resulting in great productivity loss. LANguard stems unproductive use of the Internet by monitoring users' web surfing patterns according to the organization's specific requirements," Nick Galea, president of GFI, explained.

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 (such as www.hotmail.com).

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 uses revolutionary sniffer technology that allows it to reside on any machine in the network. Unlike other Internet access control products, that are based on using a proxy server or a gateway, LANguard does not slow down Internet access, does not require network reconfiguration and does not require you to change Internet settings at each workstation! This makes LANguard much easier to install, deploy and maintain," Mr Galea added.

In addition to protection against Internet misuse, LANguard 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.

An evaluation copy is available for download. Pricing starts at $250 for the 10-user version.