Employee internet management device

• US 20020004907A1
• Filed: 01/11/2001
• Published: 01/10/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 01/12/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sysxnet Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Vericept Corporation (Singapore Telecommunications Limited)
• Inventors: Donahue, Thomas P.
• Granted Patent: US 7,315,891 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/200
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system for monitoring and maintaining an acceptable use policy for network communications. Such communications are monitored, stored and searched for the presence of preselected regular expressions, either by subject category or by keywords. The regular expressions within the subject categories are assigned predetermined values, either negative or positive. If a communication contains regular expressions whose sum of weighted values exceeds a threshold value, the communication is stored for subsequent review by an authorized user of the system. If the communication contains keywords selected by the authorized user, the communication is also stored for subsequent review.

Claims

1. In a local area network attached to a larger network, a method for maintaining an acceptable use policy comprising:

a. monitoring communications of users comprising the local area network;

b. testing the stored communication for the presence of preselected criteria;

c. deleting the communication if the presence of said preselected criteria is not determined;

d. storing the communication if the presence of preselected criteria is determined.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said preselected criteria comprises subject matter categories of regular expressions.

3. The method of claim 3, wherein said regular expressions are weighted.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein said regular expressions are weighted with either positive or negative values.

5. A method for monitoring and maintaining an acceptable use policy for computer network usage comprising:

a. capturing data on a network;

b. removing data content that does not contain language elements;

c. testing the remaining content for the presence of predeterrnined regular expressions;

d. maintaining a sum of regular expressions found within a category;

e. storing the remaining data if the sum of regular expressions present exceeds a threshold value.