DATE: Friday, June 27, 1997                 TAG: 9706270689

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A15  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   49 lines

SOFTWARE USED IN SCHOOLS CAN CUSTOMIZE STUDENT'S ACCESS TO INTERNET SITES

A Hampton company has developed some software that lets parents and schools do what the Supreme Court says Congress cannot do: curb Internet smut.

Hampton-based URLabs Inc. sells a program called I-Guard that has been used in numerous Hampton Roads schools, as well as internationally.

The software can be programmed to adjust the level of access to the Internet depending on a student's age, says Daniel Sydow, vice president of business development for URLabs.

``It's not your standard one size fits all sort of thing, where you can't go to Playboy, you can't go to Penthouse,'' Sydow said. ``That's a no brainer. This is completely customize-able.''

URLabs was formed just 18 months ago by current and former NASA Langley employees.

With URLabs' I-Guard, a fifth-grade student using a password to sign onto the Internet could be barred from more sites than a 10th-grade student using the same computer. Likewise, a teacher could instruct a computer to only allow access to history Web sites during history class and biology Web sites during that class, Sydow said.

This is called ``flexible access management.'' The levels of access permitted are coded into the school's network servers.

``You can set it up in a way that each user has a unique set of privileges,'' he said. ``If they're in the library, in the computer lab, in the science department, it's going to follow them wherever they go.''

URLabs' I-Guard differs from other software tools that allow parents to block certain sites or review a log of Internet sites that their children have visited.

America Online has a ``Kids Only'' area monitored by AOL staff. Prodigy allows parents to block Web surfing unless a parent authorizes it. Net Nanny and programs like it also block certain sites and keep a log for parents to review.

I-Guard, URLabs says, can evaluate the content of a Web site on the fly. That way, newly created objectionable sites that an adult isn't aware of can still be filtered.

I-Guard is not yet available for home Internet access, Sydow said, but the company is working on ways to make it available in homes. ``Right now, the Internet is sort of informational anarchy,'' Sydow said. ``The idea is, how do you shape that to take advantage of the most beneficial information?'' MEMO: For information about kid-friendly Internet resources and a guide

to Internet parenting, go to (http://www.vtw.org/parents). KEYWORDS: INTERNET

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