Digital Arts adds six features to i-FILTER series, web security products to create a safe and secure web environment
— —Available on January 31— —

Information security solutions provider Digital Arts Inc. (headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; CEO: Toshio Dogu; hereinafter referred to as "Digital Arts"; Code 2326) is pleased to announce that it is providing enhanced features of i-FILTER and i-FILTER@Cloud (hereinafter referred to as the "i-FILTER series") on January 31, 2024.

Digital Arts offers web security products, the i-FILTER series, in both on-premise and cloud versions. With the usage of its database of URLs collected over many years, this series realizes a system called Whitelisting, which allows users to access only websites that Digital Arts has deemed safe. The series has protected 12.25 million users*1 in the ICT environment from known and unknown malware threats, without receiving any reports of malware infection so far. Furthermore, the recent increase in demand for a wide range of security measures has prompted Digital Arts to develop its own next-generation secure web gateway (SWG) with a variety of additional features, such as anti-virus, sandbox, and cloud access security broker (CASB) for the cloud version.

Flexible Settings Unique to i- FILTER Support Users in Resolving Their Issues

Digital Arts has now added six features to the i-FILTER series: three for corporations, government agencies, and local governments, and three for schools and boards of education. These features are intended to provide more robust information leakage measures, improve usability, and reduce operational burdens with flexible settings.

Protection Filters feature is available only in the GIGA School Edition of the i-FILTER series. Other than that, all features are available, regardless of the editions.

Features for Corporations, Government Agencies, and Local Governments—More Robust Check of Uploaded/Posted Files through f-FILTER Linkage

The f-FILTER linkage is an optional service to enable access to some of the f-FILTER features via i-FILTER by linking f-FILTER, a DLP/file transfer service, and i-FILTER.
This linkage has made it possible to implement the file identification and supervisor approval features, in addition to the DLP feature, which has been linked up to now. The DLP feature checks files. The file identification feature judges their risk level based on past upload history. The supervisor approval feature realizes a workflow where files are checked by human eyes as a final step.
With this rigorous three-step checking system, you can expect stronger measures against information leakage than ever before.

The file filtering feature*2 allows users to upload or download only files with extensions and in sizes designated by the administrator. This feature was previously available only for file uploads, but by covering also file downloads, control can be tailored to various scenarios.
For example, if you want to restrict users from installing apps, you can automatically control their behaviors by setting the target extensions.

Features for Schools and Boards of Education—Preventing Bullying-Related Internet Problems before They Happen

The scheduling, YouTube channel ID control, and Protection Filters features are expected to be used in the educational field, especially at schools.
The scheduling feature allows users to easily switch filtering settings by entering any date, day of week, and time on the management screen. There are many cases in the educational field where the operational settings are switched between regular classes and long vacations, such as summer vacation. Therefore, this feature allows for entering a detailed schedule in advance to eliminate the need for adjustments at the timing just before switching seasons, leading to increased convenience.

The YouTube channel ID control feature enables setting, on a per-channel basis, which videos are allowed to be viewed and which videos are restricted from viewing. With the usage of YouTube Data APIs, this feature automatically gains video IDs uploaded to the target channels and adds them to the sharing list to eliminate the effort needed to classify videos one by one, leading to, hopefully, the reduction of administrators' operational burden.

The Protection Filters feature installed on the GIGA School Edition has a new filter, "bullying," added to the three filter settings: "suicide," "running away from home," and "protection." As the number of bullying cases has been increasing recently, cyberbullying using supplied devices is also highly possible. This feature detects access to bullying-related sites and postings to social media and other Internet services, and notifies the administrators by email, preventing Internet problems before they happen.

Digital Arts will continue to grasp users' operational issues and requests and strive to add and enhance features to the products. We are also considering implementing new features for NEXT GIGA.
*1 Number of i-FILTER Ver. 10, m-FILTER Ver. 5, i-FILTER@Cloud, and m-FILTER@Cloud users as of the end of September 2023 (in-house research.)
*2 Old upload filter; renamed due to the addition of download controls