Internet Watch Foundation welcomes two new Industry Board Members
26 May 2011
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is delighted to announce two new appointments to its Board. Brian Webb, Head of Internet Customer Security & Specialist Services at BT and Andrew Yoward, Head of Support at Yorkshire and Humberside Grid for Learning (YHGfL) have been appointed as Industry Trustees bringing a wealth of experience and expertise to the IWF Board.
Eve Salomon, IWF Chair said: “I am pleased to welcome Brian and Andrew to our Board. Their background offers a range of experience to the IWF which will be particularly useful as we embark on a new three year strategy to ensure that we remain relevant, accountable and effective in this dynamic environment.”
Brian Webb said: "It is a tremendous opportunity to be working with such an important organisation."
Andrew Yoward said: “YHGfL is about learning and puts at its heart the safety of learners in this amazingly powerful and productive medium: I am delighted to represent this perspective in my role as an industry board representative.”
NOTES
Brian Webb – biography
Brian is responsible for BT's internet acceptable use policy and its enforcement for BT's 5 million plus customer base across BT's internet access products. Within BT Brian works as part of its child internet safety steering group and the corporate responsibility group on social impacts of the internet. He represents BT on the board of Family Online Safety Institute, the funding council of the Internet Watch Foundation and on the UK Council for Child Internet Safety public awareness committee.
Brian has 23 years’ experience working within a crime and security environment, 19 of them in an investigative capacity. In Government service Brian investigated the activities of organised crime gangs, specialising in identity crime cases. Since joining BT in 1997 he has dealt with a multiplicity of criminal matters, focusing latterly on e-Crime issues. Prior to his current role Brian was Head of Incident Management Operations, BT Security where he was responsible for 24/7/365 incident monitoring & handling operations and managed security for BT's 30,000 international business travellers.
Andrew Yoward - biography
Andrew is Head of Support Services and IWF Funding Council representative at YHGfL Foundation, one of the Regional Broadband Consortia set up to meet the Government target of connecting all schools in the Yorkshire & Humber region to broadband. In addition to the successful completion of that target, YHGfL provide BECTA accredited ISP services and connectivity to over a quarter of a million students in 1500 schools as well as a significant number of public libraries and other learning establishments. Its aim to become a regional centre for excellence and innovation in eLearning was validated by the award of the ICT Excellence Award for Support to Schools in autumn 2010.
Andrew heads up the team that implements and supports the technology that provides eSafeguarding for the region, ensuring that access to inappropriate internet and e-mail content is restricted: an important element of which is the IWF child sexual abuse webpage blocking list. The team also provide technical support for local authorities and their schools across a range of technical services including network monitoring and servicing. His role involves keeping abreast of all key developments in the technology surrounding online monitoring and protection in order to provide advice and guidance to the region.
Andrew has worked in the IT industry for 15 years and has a hands-on technical background. He has industry qualifications from Microsoft & Citrix as well as certifications from Cisco. He is also in the process of achieving ITIL Expert status which establishes best practice between IT and business.
About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
The IWF is an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and member companies from the online industry, including internet service providers (ISPs), mobile operators, content providers, hosting providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector. The IWF is the UK internet Hotline and works to minimise the availability of potentially criminal internet content, specifically, images of child sexual abuse hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene adult content and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK.
The IWF is governed by a Board of ten Trustees, consisting of an Independent Chair, six independent Trustees and three industry Trustees. Independent Trustees are chosen by an open selection procedure following advertisements in the national media. Industry Trustees are elected by the IWF Funding Council.
The Board monitors, reviews and directs the IWF’s remit, strategy, policy and budget to enable the organisation to achieve its objectives.
Full biographies of all IWF Trustees and details of IWF governance arrangements are available here: http://www.iwf.org.uk/accountability/governance.
The IWF works with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to promote greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. The IWF works internationally with INHOPE Hotlines and other relevant organisations to encourage united global responses to the problem and wider adoption of good practice in combating child sexual abuse images on the internet.
The IWF helps internet service providers and hosting companies to combat the abuse of their networks through its ‘notice and takedown’ service which alerts them to content within the IWF’s remit so they can remove it from their networks. The IWF also provides unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributors. As a result of this approach the content the IWF deals with has been virtually eradicated from UK networks. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, the IWF facilitates the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse web pages.
There are a number of tactics carried out by the IWF on a national and, where relevant, international basis which minimise the availability of child sexual abuse content online:
- Reporting mechanism for the public to report any inadvertent exposure to potentially criminal child sexual abuse content.
- ‘Notice and takedown’ system to swiftly remove child sexual abuse content at source in the UK.
- Targeted assessment and monitoring system to remove child sexual abuse content in newsgroups.
- Provision of a child sexual abuse URL list to internet service providers, mobile operators, search providers and filtering providers to help disrupt access to child sexual abuse content which is hosted outside the UK and not yet taken down.
- Working with domain name registries and registrars to deregister domain names dedicated to the distribution of child sexual abuse content.
Please note that 'child pornography', 'child porn' and 'kiddie porn' are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.
IWF is an incorporated charity, limited by guarantee. Charity No. 1112398.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 237700
media@iwf.org.uk
