TMCnet - March 19, 2007
The controversial court decision against Julie Amero
- the substitute school teacher recently found guilty
of impairing the morals of a child and risk of injury
to a minor after she allowed seventh grade students
at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn., to view “pop
ups” of pornographic websites on a computer in
her classroom - has generated lots of debate about the
role teachers play in protecting students against unwanted
Internet content and the role schools play in filtering
content before it reaches the classroom.
Although it appears from testimonials on the web that
most people think Amero is innocent (she is scheduled
to be sentenced in State Superior Court on March 29,
and faces up to 40 years in prison), there are some
who have sided with the jury, which on Jan. 5, 2007,
decided that although Amero might not have had the knowledge
to prevent the endless cycle of pop ups from appearing
on the computer, she did know how to turn off the monitor
- or she could have simply thrown a coat over it so
that the children could not see the screen (if only
Amero had thought of that on that fateful day in 2004).
In the end, the jury decided that although the problem
with the pop-ups was technology-related, the fact that
the kids were able to view the screen was not. In the
words of one juror who was interviewed in a PC World
report,
immediately after the decision, “The bottom line
was that it didn’t make a difference how the porn
sites showed up on the computer.” So, in the jury’s
view, the fact that Amero didn’t know how to stop
the massive onslaught of pornographic images, or the
fact that she had been told not to shut off the computer
(because it was password protected), didn’t negate
the fact that she could have, in some way, blocked the
computer screen from the students.
Where the debate ends, however (and I’m sure
most people will agree), is that if the computer had
had decent anti-spyware software installed on it, the
whole incident could have been avoided - because the
inappropriate content would have been blocked and therefore
would have never appeared in the first place. According
to published reports, the computer had no anti-spyware
software installed - only old (and therefore out-dated)
anti-virus software. For this reason, many people view
the school system itself as being at least partly culpable.
However, one technology company has come forward with
a potential fix. To help protect teachers, students
and school administrators from malicious spywares -
and to prevent this sort of thing from happening again
- Max Secure, a leading maker of anti-spyware software,
is offering its new Max
Spyware Detector Enterprise Edition - which was
released today - to all U.S. school districts for free
for six months.
Designed for the SMB and enterprise market - but also
ideal for school districts and other organizations –
Max Spyware Enterprise Edition comes equipped with Max
Secure’s Smart Scan, a proprietary scanning solution
that reduces scan times to just a few minutes.
As explained by Sanjay Pradhan, CEO of Max Secure Software,
during a recent interview, if Kelly Middle School had
had decent anti-spyware software installed on its PCs,
the children would have never seen the objectionable
content in the first place - and Amero never would have
landed in court.
“Whether she is at fault or not, if spywares
had never come into the school, this would have never
happened,” Pradhan said. “That’s where
a company like ours comes in. Max Secure’s Max
Spyware Detector protects the PCs in any organization
by cleaning them out completely of spywares. So when
you run a scan, you have the opportunity to clean out
anything that is there, in the system - and, we also
offer continuous monitoring of PCs to make sure new
spywares don’t get launched. Also, we are continuously
building a database of sites where we know spywares
reside – so we make sure that if someone goes
to a site like that, we have the ability to ensure that
no spywares are downloaded.”
Pradhan said his company is actively notifying school
districts across the U.S. that the software is now available
to them as a free download. He said Max Spyware Detector
Enterprise Edition is ideal for school districts because
it is easy to install and maintain. In fact, this new
version of the software allows an IT administrator to
centrally manage the system - including installs, un-installs
and updates - through a centralized interface.
“What we’re offering is a very easy to
install product,” Pradhan said, adding that the
new version has seen several improvements over the stand
alone version which was released in November 2006. “You
know, a lot of these districts have 200 to 500 PCs,
and, apart from being limited on funds to buy these
products, they’re also limited on resources to
deploy them.”
Pradhan said Max Spyware Detector Enterprise Edition
helps IT administrators save time because it is capable
of scanning a PC hard drive “in 5 to 10 minutes,”
following an initial scan which takes about 30 minutes.
What makes Max Secure’s scanning technology work
so quickly is the fact that the software does a longer,
more thorough initial scan of the hard drive, which
leads to better discovery of what spyware already exists
on the disc, as well as revealing a detailed history
of what the computer has been used for in the past (which
in turn helps prevent installation of new, malicious
spywares). This initial scan is what allows subsequent
scans to take place at super fast speeds.
Pradhan said using a single interface, a school’s
IT director can install Max Spyware Detector Enterprise
Edition on 200 to 500 machines “in minutes.”
“And once it is installed, he has the capability
to get a report back, after each PC has been scanned,
to see what the level of infection was and what was
really happening on each PC,” he said. “Also,
there are automatic updates which are sent to the IT
administrator (to identify and neutralize new threats
as they emerge) which then get rapidly distributed to
every machine. We are offering about three updates per
day on our spyware detector product - which means at
least twice a day these get downloaded onto the IT administrator’s
machine - very small downloads, about 15 to 16 kb -
which then get distributed to all the PCs in the school.”
Max Spyware draws on a network of advanced users who
identify new threats and continuously update the Max
Spyware database with new definitions (the database
now contains more than 252,000 spyware threats) - thus
thwarting new threats as quickly as they emerge (and
before they jump from PC to PC to get all over the globe).
Also of importance to schools, which often face network
performance constraints, is the fact that the software
utilizes very little processing power to perform its
duties. Enterprise Edition utilizes negligible network
bandwidth since scanning is done locally on client machines.
Pradhan said Max Spyware Detector “is not only
very quick and easy to deploy, it also easy to maintain,
easy to scan – and that really can make the life
of a school IT administrator very simple, because he
is generally loaded with a lot of work.”
In addition to offering client side installation, un-installation,
updating and scheduling at a mouse click from the admin
console, as well as the “highest scanning speed”
possible among currently-available anti-spyware programs,
Max Spyware Detector Enterprise Edition also offers
detailed threat analysis; a “blocking feature”
for specific URL’s containing spywares (which
can be set by the IT administrator); frequent database
updates to ensure users are armed with latest threat
definitions; enhanced active protection to protect the
network from spyware threats; free 24x7 customer support;
automatic spyware definition updates; and free upgrades.
Although he did not go so far as to say whether Amero
is innocent or guilty, Pradhan did say he was disappointed
to learn that some of the evidence presented in the
case was not entirely accurate - and furthermore that
some critical information about spyware in general had
not been presented to the jurors. He said regardless
of the rationale behind the jury’s decision, there
is no question in his mind that technology did play
a role in what happened.
“I think from what I read in the media –
because I’m not privy to all the information that
was offered to the jurors and all that went on behind
the scenes – it appears that not all of the information
has been provided to the people,” Pradhan said.
“In terms of exactly what a spyware can do –
and what the ramifications are once a spyware lands
– including how long it can be avoided and prevented
from acting up – that could have been explained
in much more detail. And there’s no doubt that
technology has played a role here. The people who are
writing these spywares are very smart people –
there is so much money involved in these things –
and they have invested a lot of resources in the deployment
of spywares. I think that needs to be explained to everyone.”
Pradhan said in many cases, “people aren’t
clear about what spywares can do.”
“For example, they can take control of your PC
and you won’t even know it,” he said. “In
fact, your PC can be ‘auctioned off’ [and
used for a ‘bot net’] for two days, and
you don’t even know it’s happened. Someone
uses your PC for two days - and then your PC can go
on to be auctioned off to someone else for another two
days. I think these are the kinds of facts that needed
to be put in front of people – before a jury came
to decide on a case such as this.”
Pradhan said he thinks the nature of spyware is something
which should have been explained in detail – if
not demonstrated – for the jurors before they
came to their decision.
“They [the school] should have had the protection
they needed top block these things in the first place,”
he concluded. “If that had been the case, then
this thing probably never would have happened. So I
think that technology definitely did play a role.”
For more information about Max Secure, or to download
the new Max Spyware Detector Enterprise Edition, visit
www.maxpcsecure.com
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