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Westcoastcloud has developed its cloud based security service Netintelligence to give education officials the ability to block harmful content and control what websites pupils are able to access on iPads issued by their school.

The new Netintelligence safety product for iPads was unveiled by Westcoastcloud on the day the UK Council for Child Internet Safety holds its second annual summit in London. The summit comes a week after the Government published a review by Reg Bailey, chief executive of the Mothers’ Union, on the sexualisation and commercialisation of children. Entitled ‘Children 2.0 – Safe, Sociable, Connected!’ the summit is being held to discuss ground-breaking new practice and technologies to protect children online and is being addressed by Children and Families Minister Tim Loughton and psychologist and broadcaster Professor Tanya Byron.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said: “New technology has an amazing ability to educate and entertain, but it also has the ability to expose children to danger. Industry and retailers have a part to play in helping to keep children safe online.

Westcoastcloud’s new Netintelligence solution will give education officials the ability to manage user activity on all internet-connected iPads, laptops and desktops used in a school through one central control panel. Easy to install and use, it collects URLs and categorises them according to the harmful or inappropriate nature of their content. This then allows a school or education authority to set up filtering and blocking policies to control which websites can be accessed through the iPad. If a pupil tries to access a website that is blocked a message will appear on the screen of the tablet saying that the website is blocked and that they should speak to their Netintelligence operator within the school.

The Netintelligence product for iPads will also be available for iPhones. It works with iOS, Apples’ mobile operating system. It is nearing the end of its development stage and is due to be submitted to Apple for approval this summer.

Earlier this year Children and Families Minister Tim Loughton presented Netintelligence with the UK’s first Kitemark certificate for Child Safety Online (PAS 74:2008 Internet Safety). The Kitemark, awarded by the British Standards Institution (BSI), aims to give parents and carers confidence in the internet filtering products available to help them limit the amount of harmful content seen by their children.

Last year Netintelligence was named Security Project of the Year at the inaugural UK Computing Security Awards for its role in protecting the 270,000 laptops issued to low income families under the Government’s Home Access Scheme.