NetSupport Software

A decade of change

The scale of the problem has grown dramatically. The IWF reports that its analysts handled more than 250,000 reports of child sexual abuse material in 2021, a nineteen- fold increase on a decade earlier. In 2025, their analysts acted on more than 312,000 web pages showing indecent images of children, a record total and a 7% rise on the previous year. More than nine in ten of the webpages actioned in 2024 contained imagery created without the abusers being present, often by children under duress or deception, and reports involving seven to ten-year-olds rose by 25% between 2022 and 2023. These are sobering figures.

The regulatory landscape has toughened, too. The UK Online Safety Act became law in October 2023. It obliges online services and search engines to remove illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, and mandates hash-matching technology to detect and remove known child sexual abuse images. Illegal content duties came into force on 17 March 2025, and children’s safety duties followed on 25 July 2025. NetSupport’s tools are designed to help schools demonstrate compliance with these requirements and with frameworks like Keeping Children Safe in Education.

Technology is also being abused in new ways. The IWF’s research highlighted the emergence of AI-generated child sexual abuse images and the first realistic deepfake videos of children being abused, with more than 3,500 new AI-generated images detected on a dark web forum within one month in 2024. Offenders are using AI tools to graft a child’s face onto adult content and sharing the results both on the dark web and the open internet. The threats are evolving fast, and we have to adapt just as quickly.

Online safeguarding with NetSupport

At NetSupport, we started with a straightforward keyword list; today, our safeguarding approach is far more sophisticated. Our products, NetSupport DNA and classroom.cloud, analyse every trigger in context, weighting factors such as time of day, whether the device is supervised and any previous alerts, to produce a risk score. A low-risk term typed in a Word document during class generates a very different response from a high-risk term typed in an unsupervised chat room. Alerts can be stored as text, screenshots or screen recordings so that designated safeguarding leads have the context they need.

We have continually enriched our database of more than 20,000 keywords. In recent updates, we have added hundreds of new terms, refreshed the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit list and introduced language packs for Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Polish. 
New categories such as gambling and cybersecurity help staff to see emerging risks at a glance, and our tools allow notes to be added and events to be marked as ‘new’, ‘in progress’ or ‘complete’ – features that make collaboration simpler. Both NetSupport DNA and classroom.cloud visualise trending topics in a word cloud and support custom keyword sharing across schools.

classroom.cloud’s image analysis feature strengthens safeguarding by scanning the images students view on screen and alerting staff when harmful content may have been seen. It monitors images in websites, apps and media across five categories: adult, drugs, racism, radicalisation and weapons, and schools can switch each category on or off as needed. When a match occurs, it sits alongside phrase monitoring and the risk index to give staff a clearer context and help them respond quickly and proportionately. It currently runs on 64-bit Windows devices and adds an important layer of insight to help schools keep students safe online.

Working together into the future

What has not changed is the importance of partnership. By integrating the IWF’s monthly Keyword List and feeding back regional terms and trends, we help each other stay ahead. A decade on from the start of our IWF membership, safeguarding remains a challenge, but collaboration and technology give us the best chance of success.