NetSTAR

TOKYO November 10, 2009

　TOKYO—November 10, 2009—NetSTAR, Inc., Japan’s premier developer of URL filtering product technologies and services, today announced that it will review some of its filtering criteria to make it easier for consumers to use the product, and expand its master database to deal with the increasing number of websites included in the URL filtering lists. These improvements will be reflected in URL lists released in and after January 2010. This is just one of the general improvements to NetSTAR’s URL lists and technologies originally announced in May of 2009. 

　NetSTAR’s URL lists are used in the filtering products and services used by many of the nation's corporations, public organizations, schools, and other organizations. NetSTAR lists are also used in the filtering services of mobile phone service providers and some spam filtering applications, becoming an essential part of the infrastructure that supports the Internet user environment. Awareness of the necessity of information security is growing in the corporate sector, and the Internet environment is becoming more broadly available to children and young people. These environmental changes are driving a shift in the role of URL filtering products and services and URL filtering lists. They are no longer the domain of experts, but must be easy for the average person to use. In addition, as the absolute number of CGM websites (made up primarily of content generated by the users) grows, URL filtering lists must become equally savvy in their approach.

　NetSTAR’s answer to these environmental changes is to implement the solutions described below, which will be applied to URL list data creation and distribution to customers starting on January 6, 2010.

1) Expansion of the master database system
In order to deal with the climbing number of websites to be filtered, we will greatly expand the database’s processing capacity to more than 10 times that of the current system. The data distribution process, which transfers data from the master database to each product and service, will also have improved availability and processing speed to reduce the time between list updates and improve the distribution of urgent updates. In the future, we will increase the flexibility of URL categories through structural changes to portions of the master database. This improvement will not change the operation of the customer’s filtering products or services.

2) Enhancement of the URL list category criteria
The configuration of filtering products and services, which determines which fields (categories) should be restricted, has been the domain of corporate system administrators and others with sufficient knowledge and experience with the risks of Internet use and their solutions. However, filtering is no longer a technology for only the largest corporations but is spreading to small and medium businesses as well, and it is even becoming common for the general public to use filtering on their mobile phones and computers. As this trend continues, there has been a demand for more intuitive category names and related content, which forms the basis of filtering configuration.
In response, NetSTAR has reviewed the category combinations and their order for each application of filtering criteria to adapt them to home use, and in August of this year, the company began providing the NetSTAR Filtering Category for Kids, a URL list specially compiled by experts in the field.
　We considered companies as well as households in our efforts and reviewed the filtering criteria in the most commonly used categories to make them more intuitive and easier to understand and use for all users.
　For example, the category titled “Illegal Acts," which included some adult websites, dating websites, and gambling websites, has been split up accordingly into an “Adult” category, a “Dating” category, and a “Gambling” category. Some of the URLs for swim wear models in the “Fetish “ category will be moved to the “Adult Magazine/News" category.
　Customers currently configuring their filtering product or service to allow viewing of this category may experience different results (blocking) for some individual sites.

　NetSTAR began offering the NetSTAR Filtering Categories for Kids in August of 2009, and we continue to actively monitor the changes in societal conditions and Internet usage trends and make corresponding changes to our product, such as our efforts to produce the industry’s first detailed sub-categorization of community sites based on usage risk evaluations. This most recent improvement is also a part of this effort. NetSTAR continues to research and develop the technology necessary to deliver easy-to-use, highly reliable URL lists and related products and services.

About NetSTAR, Inc, and URL Lists
　NetSTAR specializes in the development of URL filtering software and services, and in the collection, categorization, and delivery of URL lists. NetSTAR URL lists are used in a number of market-leading products like InterSafe WebFilter by Alps System Integration Co., Ltd., and InterScan and WebManager by Trend Micro Incorporated.  Recognized for its high performance and low false positive rate, our products are number one (*1) among large companies with strict quality requirements, including approximately 60% of prefectural governments, 40% of central governments, and 40% of the companies in the Nikkei Excellent Company Ranking. We also have a greater than 40% share of the market nationwide. (*2)
　NetSTAR's URL lists are now being used in security appliance products and routers for small- and medium-size businesses, and many individual customers are using them through our home-use filtering services. Over the years, NetSTAR has gained much recognition for the broad applicability of its individual URL lists as well as the quality and reliability of its collection, categorization, and delivery processes. NetSTAR’s URL lists for filtering services are the only lists that have been adopted by all mobile phone operators in Japan. (*3)
http://www.netstar-inc.com/
　*1. Based on NetSTAR's research *2. according to Fuji Chimera Research Institute *3. we distribute new lists daily for use in the filtering systems of NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Softbank Mobile, WILLCOM, and EMOBILE.

* NetSTAR is a registered trademark of NetSTAR, Inc. Other product and company names are the registered trademarks of their respective companies.