IWF CEO and Hotline Director win at PIER Excellence in Online Protection Awards

IWF Chief Executive Susie Hargreaves OBE and Hotline Director Chris Hughes have respectively won awards for inspirational leadership, and for operational impact at the first ever Excellence in Online Protection Awards held at the PIER (Policing Institute for the Eastern Region) conference on Tuesday (May 21).

Ms Hargreaves was awarded the 'Inspirational Leadership Award' in recognition of her work as CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and her impact in creating a world free from child sexual abuse.

Ms Hargreaves said: “Not a day goes by that I am not moved by the incredible efforts of our team at the IWF, and the lengths our staff go to to help protect children online.

“I am so proud of all our work, and am pleased to be able to play my part within this incredible organisation.”

Mr Hughes was awarded the 'Operational Impact Award' in recognition of his work to “revolutionise the categorisation” of online child sexual abuse imagery by developing the IWF’s bespoke IntelliGrade hash grading system.

IntelliGrade allows analysts to enrich its image hashes with additional contextual metadata, meaning hashes generated by IntelliGrade are compatible with child sexual abuse laws and classifications in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Interpol Baseline standard.

This means the IWF can provide a dataset of hashes of child sexual abuse imagery which is compatible with multiple legal jurisdictions around the world.

Intelligrade was recognised as “a classification matrix which transcends legal jurisdictions”, and was dubbed “the Rosetta Stone” for online grading.

Mr Hughes said: “Online child sexual abuse is a truly global problem, and one we must all be united in tackling together.

“I’m pleased our work at the IWF was able to help bridge some of these international gaps, and that it has helped further our efforts to stop the spread of child sexual abuse imagery, wherever it is being shared.”