Directory of UK Safety Tech Providers (updated March 2024)
Updated 6 March 2024
© Crown copyright 2024
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/directory-of-uk-safety-tech-providers/directory-of-uk-safety-tech-providers
Ministerial Foreword 2023
We are delighted to present the latest version of the UK’s Safety Tech Providers Directory.
Safety Tech encompasses a range of technologies and solutions facilitating safer online experiences. These include the automated identification and removal of illegal imagery, the use of age-assurance to ensure appropriate usage of online content, network filtering and services that identify and mitigate disinformation.
The first edition of the UK Safety Tech Provider’s Directory was published in 2021, updated in 2022, and now we are pleased to present this third edition. Since then, the UK Safety Tech sector has continued to grow and mature; sector revenues increased by 20% in the last year to £456 million; and the sector now employs over 3,300 across the UK.1
Our success in this sector draws on UK expertise across data science, cyber-security, and artificial intelligence, including natural language processing. The UK’s behavioural and social sciences, criminology and law also support an ideal innovation landscape that results in cutting edge technologies. As a result, the UK is a world-leader in safety technology, with UK companies comprising over 25% of the global market, helping to cement the UK’s place as a science and technology superpower by 2030.
In recognition of the dangers online, the UK government and other governments across the globe are committing to taking action to safeguard citizens against online harms. The Online Safety Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023. This Act sets out a new regulatory framework for online safety and companies’ responsibilities to keep UK users, particularly children, safer online - including robust action to counter illegal content and activity.
However, the Act will not achieve its aims in isolation. Safety technologies will play an increasingly important role in supporting compliance with the new regulation and preparing businesses to do their part in building a safer online environment. Recognition of the role that safety tech will play has spurred the government to introduce a number of practical measures to grow the industry further, including establishing the Safety Tech Innovation Network and the Safety Tech Challenge Fund. The Safety Tech Challenge Fund has to-date supported the development of innovative solutions to tackle online child sexual abuse.
The companies listed in this Directory offer innovative products and services which are already helping to deliver safer online experiences for millions of users around the world. It is a sector ripe for investment and with considerable export potential to markets with similar concerns about online safety.
The Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) investment and trade teams stand ready to help connect you to these outstanding UK companies, and we look forward to working with you to help make the internet safer for everyone.
Lord Offord of Garvel
Minister for Exports (Department for Business and Trade)
Saqib Bhatti MP
Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Introduction - How safety tech can help you
Safety tech providers develop technology or solutions to facilitate safer online experiences, and protect users from harmful content, contact or conduct.
The technology and services that these organisations provide are valuable to government and society. They help law enforcement and platforms to identify and stop some of the most serious illegal content such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, and terrorist imagery and material. The technologies and services work to reduce the risk of users, including children, being exposed to harmful content, contact or conduct such as grooming, bullying, radicalisation and/or viewing self-harm material. They also help to tackle disinformation, and false or misleading narratives.
This directory categorises the products and services offered by UK-head-quartered safety tech providers as follows:
Automated identification and removal of known illegal content
Identification and removal of known illegal child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) and terrorist content.
Detection of potentially harmful or illegal content or behaviour, including fraud
Detection of potentially harmful or illegal content or behaviour (e.g. grooming, hate crime, harassment, cyberbullying, scams, extremism or advocacy of self-harm) and flagging to human moderators for action.
Enabling age-appropriate online experiences
Establish the age of your users and ensure online environments are safe and age-appropriate for children.
Device-level protection
User, parental or device-based products that can be installed on devices to help protect the user from harm.
Network filtering
Products or services that actively filter content, through black-listing or blocking content perceived to be harmful across school, business or home internet.
Identifying and mitigating disinformation
Flagging of content with false, misleading and/or harmful narratives, through the provision of fact-checking and disruption of disinformation (e.g., flagging trusted sources).
This categorisation is likely to change over time as the market matures. If you have a need for technology that doesn’t quite fit into any of these categories, then please seek direct help from our sector organisations:
-
Online Safety Tech Industry Association (OSTIA)
-
Age Verification Providers Association
-
The Safety Tech Innovation Network
Use case - Automated identification and removal of known illegal content
-
Blocks extremist terrorism and child abuse material
-
Reliable and cost effective
-
Reduces moderator exposure to horrific content
Automated scanning technologies provide companies and law enforcement agencies with a rapid, accurate and effective way of detecting and removing known illegal content. This content is found in various formats – including texts, videos and images – and can promote harms such as child sexual abuse and terrorism.
These technologies, including digital hash and keyword matching, work similar to anti-virus protection. Through hash technology, uploaded images, audios and videos are checked against central databases of content that is known to be illegal, each item of which has a unique digital fingerprint or ‘hash’. If an uploaded content matches the ‘hashed’ content, it is quarantined and flagged for attention.
Similarly, through keyword matching technology, texts are flagged that include known words used by perpetrators. Other technologies in this group use targeted searching to detect text that matches the illegal content.
For companies, the use of these technologies provides an easy, reliable and cost-effective way in which to detect and address some of the most harmful content, whether this content is uploaded to the web or stored within company systems. The Swedish organisation Netclean estimates that of the businesses that have scanning technology in place, one in ten have found illegal material.
Such tools can also help protect moderators and investigators by limiting their exposure to highly disturbing content. They are frequently used in combination with other types of technology - such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools - which can detect new (not previously known) content that is being contributed to systems.
Use case: Detection of potentially harmful or illegal content or behaviour including fraud
-
Fast, reliable triage of content and communications
-
Reduces moderator workload by as much as 70%
-
Faster and more effective than relying on user reporting
Businesses are placing increasing value on maintaining online environments in which users can interact safely and positively with others in the community. These communities need careful management, nurturing and steering. In practice, this frequently involves the intervention of human moderators who are able to judge acceptable behaviours and intervene accordingly. These moderators are, however, becoming increasingly overwhelmed, and despite their best efforts can struggle to cope with the volume of content they are expected to process. They may miss urgent risks, or patterns of behaviour over time. Traditional automated approaches such as keyword detection are simply inadequate, producing an unmanageable number of false positives.
Artificial Intelligence can help moderators by recognising, categorising and triaging high volumes of potentially harmful or illegal content including scams and fraudulent behaviour. Solutions frequently involve use of cutting-edge, contextual AI to analyse content and behaviour in the round, based on multidisciplinary methods such as psychology and behavioural science.
UK company Arwen AI Limited uses a sophisticated automated AI approach for its global clients. They collect all comments from client social media accounts in real time, with each comment analysed by 25 different algorithms in 30 languages to detect a range of unwanted or offensive content. When the content of a comment breaks that client’s rules, Arwen automatically hides the comment from public view. Arwen processes over 200,000 comments a day, helping to protect 440m followers globally.
Case studies have shown that use of AI- based methods can significantly reduce moderator workload. Critically, AI tools can also help to protect moderators themselves by reducing their fatigue and minimise their exposure to explicit, often traumatising, material.
Use case: Enabling age-appropriate online experiences
-
Create safe environments that are child and parent friendly
-
Avoid user friction and privacy concerns associated with traditional proof of age
Age assurance is the broad term given to the spectrum of methods that can be used to assure a user’s age or age band online. Age assurance solutions, including age verification measures, help companies establish the age of their users to a given level of confidence and are therefore particularly helpful for identifying child users.
There are a range of age assurance methods available that offer different levels of confidence about a user’s age and companies can choose a solution that provides a level of confidence that is proportionate to the specific risks posed by a product or service. For example, a service that poses a high risk to a child will likely want to use a solution that provides a high level of confidence in the age of a user.
Age verification is one type of age assurance measure that provides the highest confidence in the age of a user. Currently, these solutions commonly rely on hard identifiers or officially provided data, such as a passport or credit card.
Other age assurance measures that estimate the age of a user to a lower level of confidence or provide an age band are called ‘age estimation’. Currently, these solutions often rely on AI.
Age assurance more broadly can be a tool to enable companies to provide a more tailored user experience. By knowing the age or age band of a user, companies can provide appropriate features, functions or content for that user.
Use case: Device-level protection
-
Empower parents and schools to protect children in their care
-
Help educate users about staying safe and behaving well online
Among the most exciting developments in recent years has been the significant advances made in ‘device-level’ protection - apps or features that sit on a child’s mobile phone that can be used to create a safer online environment for them, at the point of interaction.
For example, the BBC ‘[Own It’](https://www.bbc.com/ownit) tool helps children to record how they’re feeling and why, and can offer help, guidance and support if their behaviour strays outside safe and sensible norms. And the software that powers the SafeToNet app uses AI to detect and filter in real-time signs of bullying, sexual risk, abuse and aggression as they type, alerting the child as they veer towards risk.
Use case: Network filtering
- Ensure only appropriate content is available in schools, homes or workplaces
Web filtering technologies work by regulating the web traffic that is accessible on a device (e.g. a school-provided laptop), or via a location or network - such as a family home, company, school or university - and decides what is allowed to pass through.
These technologies frequently offer users the choice of what types of content are allowable - for example, schools will opt to block gambling sites - and may contain ‘blocklists’ of known bad domains or URLs, though the most modern filters can scan websites for undesirable content in real-time. In an education setting, they can be used to send safeguarding alerts to Designated Safeguarding Leaders.
Use case: Identifying and mitigating disinformation
- Guard your community and your brand by preventing the spread of disinformation and misinformation
Safety tech can help detect a range of inauthentic behaviours and content, from coordinated accounts created or taken over to push specific messages, to botnets and other elements that are indicative of large scale disinformation campaigns. Machine learning can help identify manipulated media, as well as place content in context and cross reference different indicators, rather than just scanning keywords.
Social media platforms can build on this analysis to moderate content, remove violations of their rules or add warnings and flags to harmful material. Apps and plugins aimed at users can help build audience resilience to both misinformation and disinformation by advising them on the reliability of a website or news article as well as steer them towards trustworthy content.
Given a set of content (trustworthy or fake), online safety tech companies can help automatically identify further propagation of the materials on the web. This large-scale intelligence gathering can be used for rating and moderation of content, whether for further analysis or for flagging and removal of harmful material.
Provider Associations
Online Safety Tech Industry Association
The Internet is a wonderful resource which enriches virtually all aspects of our daily lives. The dangers of the internet are also clear; some people see it as a means to bully, defraud or abuse others.
We need to find ways of mitigating against the dangers, without damaging all that is good. End users and companies increasingly recognise their individual and collective responsibility to ensure that the internet becomes as safe an environment as possible but don’t always know what technologies are available to them.
The Online Safety Tech Industry Association (OSTIA) represents the interests of innovative UK companies whose primary business is developing technical products and solutions that make the internet a safer place for everyone. Our members are some of the UK’s most successful online safety companies, offering a huge range of solutions from detecting child abuse material and potential grooming chats through to delivering platforms that have safety baked in by design and user verification so platforms know who their users are and how old they are without risk to users privacy.
Our key aims:
-
We will be a voice of hope, showcasing what can be done to improve online safety in a world where too often what should be done is confronted with difficulties and complexities. It is a huge challenge with no magical silver bullet, and in some areas, there is a genuine need to balance different issues such as freedom of speech and data privacy. All our members understand these challenges, and we will showcase technologies and services that are available NOW and which can address significant challenges to online safety. We believe that this will help to advance the public conversation about online safety, as well as help individual organisations.
-
We will work together to amplify our collective influence, helping inform the public, policy makers and big companies about the art of the possible and so they can make better decisions. We also want to tell our story collectively to the investment community, which has a big role to play in funding innovation and growth in our companies.
-
OSTIA provides a forum to network, making it easier for safety tech companies to collaborate, learn from each other, and hold events where we can showcase our work to the international community and demonstrate our export readiness.
The UK safety technology ecosystem is at the forefront of developing ground-breaking solutions to help governments, NGOs, and companies to make the internet a safer place. We are stronger working together. If you share this view, then please get in touch – we would be interested in engaging with you.
Online Safety Tech Industry Association
The Age Verification Providers Association
The Age Verification sub-sector has grown rapidly over the past five years and has successfully built upon the lessons from similar tech sectors to organise itself as a coherent global industry. It includes many innovative firms who continually seek to improve solutions to make age assurance more effective for users and businesses.
The founding members of the Age Verification Providers Association agreed to a Code of Conduct to establish a common set of internationally applicable rules to provide a solid foundation for the sector’s reputation. They also worked with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to develop an industry standard for conducting age verification – PAS 1296:2018 - which will be shortly updated by IEEE P2089.1: “Standard for Online Age Verification” and, in 2025 by the ISO framework 27566: Age Assurance Systems.
The sector has worked together to develop open-system protocols for interoperability of their solutions across Europe as part of the euCONSENT project, and as the sector matures, an attribute exchange modelled on payment networks which will create a sustainable, open and competitive market in certified online age-assurance. A mechanism for the universal validation of digital proofs of age shown on smartphones is also being developed with the Proof of Age Standards Scheme.
The British model is being studied closely by other jurisdictions, as far apart as Australia, USA, Poland, New Zealand, France, Ireland and Germany with the sector setting the international standard and positioned to be a major UK export success story.
The Safety Tech Innovation Network
The Safety Tech Innovation Network is an international innovation network set up and run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, dedicated to the promotion, collaboration and the industrial application of online technologies. The Network has hosted a range of events to bring different parts of the community together with each other and those interested in safety tech. It provides guidance and information on trends and new developments in safety tech, as well as signposting to useful organisations for the trust and safety community.
About the Directory
This guide was published in October 2023.
For further information about the Directory or to update company details in future editions, contact safetytech@dcms.gov.uk.
For further information about safety tech exports, contact techexports@trade.gov.uk.
Legal disclaimer
Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this document is accurate, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) do not accept liability for any errors, omissions or misleading statements, and no warranty is given or responsibility accepted as to the standing of any individual, firm, company or other organisation mentioned.
A to Z of Safety Tech companies
1account Age Verification
1account provides businesses with an award-winning, secure technical solution to validate user ‘know your customer’ data such as age and identity. This typically happens during the sale or sign up process, and is completed in real-time and with user consent.
Adept Education
AdEPT Education, part of the Wavenet Group, is a leading provider of technology services to the education sector, providing firewall, filtering and authentication services, among others, to over 4,000 schools across the UK, for over 2 million educational users. Adept Education seeks to engage and support both staff and students, whether through their academic progression or personal well-being.
AgeChecked
AgeChecked is a specialist in global age verification. Their wide range of services enable online website operators to meet their responsibilities in regard to age-restricted products or content.
Arwen
Arwen, powered by Assimity Limited, is a solution that identifies & removes hate speech from social media conversations; so every word, emoji and comment is automatically blocked, flagged or released in real-time. Arwen is for anyone who values their voice in social media - from Elite Sport players, teams and organisations to entertainers, celebrities, consumer brands and individuals. Arwen is dedicated to making Social Media social again.
Azoomee
Azoomee is a kid-safe edutainment service with an award-winning library of inspiring TV shows and games that foster curiosity and wonder in kids. From character-led stories about online safety to spectacular science and hands-on DIY, everything on Azoomee is handpicked so kids can create, learn and grow in safety.
Baycloud Systems
Baycloud Systems provides website scanning, consent management and security software. Their wide range of technology services and products detect and report on user tracking or potentially dangerous content on websites, automatically block unrecognised content such as potential malware, and ensure that website visitors are given informed privacy choices which are clearly and properly actioned. They are designed to enable website operators to seamlessly meet their data protection, security and user privacy responsibilities.
Broadband4 / SchoolCare
Broadband4 is an education-focussed Internet Service Provider, delivering high speed internet access for schools over a privately-owned network. Delivering a comprehensive suite of e-safety and filtering tools, Broadband4 helps educational establishments ensure their pupils, staff and networks are protected.
CameraForensics
CameraForensics offers digital imaging forensics for global law enforcement agencies. Its technology crawls, indexes and identifies imagery across the web to match online and offline personas, empowering investigators to solve complex crimes. CameraForensics web-crawlers automatically detect and report illegal imagery. The company provides consultancy in web-scale image processing and crawling.
CAP Certified
CAP is an app for parents, designed to remove the possibility of children engaging with online predators, scammers and bullies on social media, gaming and communication platforms. CAP also offers trusted age and user verification as a service that enables digital platforms to comply with online safety regulations.
Checkstep
Checkstep provides a Platform-as-a-Service to manage User-Generated-Content through seamless policy change and monitoring. It helps platforms customise their trust and safety needs by providing the privacy, security and accuracy they need.
Citispotter
Citispotter is developing cutting-edge AI solutions to detect harmful signals in content. It helps businesses create positive societal impact and avoid potential risks such as ad placement on harmful content, reputation damage, bad publicity, content penalties, and taking an unethical stance.
Cleanband
Cleanband delivers a flexible Internet filtering platform for Service Providers to help protect their clients from exposure to undesirable or inappropriate content. Optimised for flexibility and price, the platform operates on a wide range of hardware and software.
Content Score
Content Score uses AI to identify harmful content in multiple languages to help publishers, platforms and moderation teams find and remove harmful, racist, sexist and fake news content faster.
CPOMS Systems
CPOMS is an online system, used by over 16,500 schools across the globe, to help school staff log any concerns relating to the wellbeing of a pupil – whether pastoral, safeguarding or in relation to child protection.
Crisp
Crisp (now a Kroll business) provides services that protect users from online exploitation, lies, threats, abuse and hate. Its intelligence graph discovers the actor groups who originate, amplify and observe these risks. By continuously classifying associated digital chatter, Crisp is able to predict future actions and prevents the spread and impact of these damaging behaviours. Its graph then learns from these connections to become increasingly effective at predicting complex risks. Crisp not only defends the reputations of today’s top global brands, it also contributes to the safe, daily online experiences of over two billion users, including an estimated 450 million children.
Cyacomb
Cyacomb helps law enforcement, social media, and cloud providers to find and block harmful CSAM and terrorist material. Its new generation of tools provides dramatically accelerated on-site or lab based digital triage for policing, effective protection for social media, cloud and messaging apps, and empowers governments to achieve policy goals.
Deephound
Deephound is developing an autonomous intelligence platform based on an Open Source Intelligence AI-Engine that enables companies and entities to retrieve actionable intelligence from the web. Deephound cooperates with nonprofit organisations to fight intimate image abuse, cyber-bullying, disinformation and help finding missing people by providing its technology dedicated to help solving these problems.
Digital Safety CIC
Real-world digital threat is now ever-present for large organisations, micro-businesses, and individuals alike. The prime objective of Digital Safety CIC is to increase public safety and the efficiency of mainstream and specialist law enforcement, through reducing digital harm to an increasingly vulnerable society.
Digital Woof
Digital Woof empowers people and organisations with the knowledge and tools to create a safer online experience. Through their innovative “digital dogs”, FiDO and REX, Digital Woof delivers essential online safety education and employs advanced analysis technology to detect harmful content. Committed to prevention over reaction, Digital Woof is the reliable companion in navigating the digital landscape securely and confidently.
Dr Sarah Carlick (MeSafe)
A Safer Cultures & Social Care Tech consultancy, which blends safeguarding and digital solutions to create digitally safer cultures and safer digital working practices. Consultancy for safeguarding digital strategies; apps to transform databases for user-centric pathways; managing safeguarding risks; design principles of apps from a child’s perspective; new ideas for reporting pathways; multi-agency apps.
DragonflAI
DragonflAI applies cutting-edge machine learning technology to seamlessly moderate nudity on live streams. This pioneering solution operates entirely on-device, ensuring that the content is effectively filtered before it ever reaches the internet.
E2BN Protex Ltd
E2BN Protex provides differentiated web content and URL filtering to the education sector. Users are assigned to age appropriate profiles that can be tailored to the schools safeguarding policies. E2BN Protex is fully compliant with the UK Safer Internet Centre’s recommendations for an appropriate filter and supports schools’ PREVENT Duty.
eAWARE
eAWARE offers an online safety programme for both schools and families, designed to identify online risk and empower young people with the skills they need to stay safe online.
esafety Ltd
eSafety Ltd offers advice and consultancy to schools, teachers, pupils, parents and other professionals to address the challenges posed by modern technology. It is led by Karl Hopwood, an online safety expert with over 15 years of experience working with schools, government and law enforcement agencies.
Extrac AI
ExTrac draws on thousands of data sources identified by domain experts, using artificial intelligence-powered analytics to locate, track and forecast violence and its associated risks both on and offline.
Factmata
Factmata helps brands and organisations reduce the damaging effects of online misinformation and harmful content. Its intelligence dashboards and reports help companies understand what their audience is thinking and saying, by flagging potentially harmful content and showing its impact.
Faculty
Faculty.AI is an applied AI company that helps build and accelerate an organisation’s AI capability. They are one of the fastest growing technology companies in the UK, offering a range of software and services solutions. Faculty works with a number of high-profile brands globally, as well as with various government departments and agencies, such as the Home Office, NCA, DESNZ, DSIT and the NHS. Faculty has helped develop tools to detect deepfakes, online terrorist propaganda and OCSEA.
Flying Binary
FlyingBinary is a top ten global deeptech company focused on inclusion. All services are assured and accredited by H.M. Government. The organisation helps 180 governments understand the impact of online harm, expose illegal and harmful behaviour and disinformation.
Friendly WiFi
Friendly WiFi is a safe certification standard for public WiFi. It checks public WiFi services are properly filtering child sexual abuse and pornographic material. The Friendly WiFi symbol allows operators of public WiFi services globally to show their WiFi is safe to use and meets a minimum standard of filtering.
GB Group
GBG’s age verification software protects both organisations and their customers by ensuring that they let the right people in, and keep the wrong people out. The process can be run with data, ID Documents or a combination of both, globally for all countries.
Global Disinformation Index (GDI)
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a non-profit aimed at catalysing industry to reduce disinformation and its harms. It offers scalable solutions to identify adversarial narrative topics and high-risk domains for advertisers, ad tech companies and platforms. GDI provides a trusted and independent rating of disinformation risk for news sites by leveraging data science and intelligence.
GoBubble
GoBubble’s machine learning-powered content moderation and detection SaaS helps sports, dating, esports and community platforms to create safer environments. Checking all text, audio, video, image and emoji content in real-time, it saves Trust and Safety leads and moderators valuable time in running the checks and handling incidents for them. It has additional efficiency by checking the context of the message, giving the software a laser focus in detecting and addressing issues before they appear. They also have a tool which helps to silence hate targeting organisations and individuals on mainstream social media (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook).
Human Digital
Human Digital works with government and global brands to detect, categorise and track harmful content to improve agile AI model performance and provide deep strategic analytics. Its human-led, tech-enabled approach combats the fast-moving challenges of sentiment, context, language complexity and platform visibility that occur across complex online ecosystems.
ICUC Social
ICUC is a full-service social media community management company providing services in online moderation, engagement, insights, listening, crisis management, and social media strategy.
Innovative Technology
Innovative Technology uses their algorithms to recognise faces and verify age, using their extensive datasets to reduce gender and skin tone bias. Their algorithms are not publicly available, making their system, and customer data more secure.
www.intelligent-identification.com
Image Analyzer
Image Analyzer offers an image and video content moderation solution that detects visual threats with unique artificial intelligence based content moderation software. The organisation helps its clients and platform owners to minimise corporate legal risk exposure, protect brand reputation and comply with online safeguarding regulations by recognising visual, harmful material, including pornography, extremism and graphic violence in images, videos and streaming media. Image Analyzer is also the winner of Computing Magazine’s AI & Machine Learning Award 2021 – Best Emerging Technology in AI.
Impero Software
Impero Software’s learner wellbeing and device management solutions help schools monitor and manage devices to keep all students safe online. With scalable web filtering software protecting students at a network level, Impero’s real-time monitoring software detects vulnerable students at a device level, for a complete student safety solution.
INEQE Safeguarding Group
INEQE Safeguarding Group makes people safer using innovative app-based technology. This utilises AI prompts when help is needed, advice on device level protection and resources to mitigate online risks and misinformation. Their Safer Schools App, dashboards, eLearning, consultancy and digital assessments are designed to empower families, schools, and sporting bodies.
Internet Matters
Internet Matters is a not-for-profit organisation that works collaboratively with industry, government and sector experts so that every child can stay safe and thrive in the digital world. It provides comprehensive advice and resources for parents, carers and professionals to help them actively engage in children’s online lives and manage risks they may face.
Internet Watch Foundation
The Internet Watch Foundation offers a range of technical services to the internet industry including a webpage blocking list, an image hash list and keywords list that enables companies to block or prevent access to illegal child sexual abuse content (CSAM). They proactively search the internet and receive public reports of suspected CSAM and operate reporting portals which enable 2.5 billion citizens in 49 countries to report suspected CSAM to them for assessment.
Island23
lsland23 works with individuals and global organisations to build safe, secure and scalable online communities and community management implementation strategy. It specialises in healthcare, pharmaceutical, technology and mental health online communities and is led by Darren Gough, a 15+ year community management expert and keynote speaker.
Jess Digital
Jess Digital offer training and consultancy to schools, companies, public and voluntary organisations. With expertise in the online harms agenda, their focus is to empower digital citizens – rooting online safety within the context of the digital economy and online communications revolution.
Lightspeed Systems
Lightspeed Systems provide schools with the ability to filter, monitor, and report on every device. Their cloud-based solutions provide scalable content filtering, SSL decryption, safe
YouTube, social media tools and help ensure Ofsted and KCSIE e-safety compliance. They also provide advanced reporting and alerts for self-harm, cyberbullying and much more.
Logically
Logically works with governments, technology platforms and brands around the world to help detect, analyse and mitigate harmful misinformation, problematic content, and malign influence operations. Additionally, the company offers a semi-automated fact checking service and research partnerships.
Luciditi
The Luciditi Platform was created to provide a secure and privacy-respecting way to share data with trusted parties. Luciditi uses a combination of data security technology, temporary data access, biometrics, user consent and approval, real-time data exchange, and Artificial Intelligence to protect users’ data, increase privacy and reduce fraud.
ModSquad
ModSquad is a global provider of on-demand digital engagement services, known as ModSourcing: outsourcing modernised. Their experienced professionals engage clients ’customers across online, mobile, and social media channels. ModSquad offers services in customer support, moderation, social, and community, and has strategised digital initiatives for clients in 70+ countries, in 50+ languages.
Moonshot
Moonshot works to disrupt and ultimately end violent extremism. From digital capacity-building to counter-messaging campaigns, its data-proven techniques help its clients respond to violent extremism effectively all over the world.
NetSupport
NetSupport offers multilingual proactive / reactive online safety and wellbeing tools, helping schools create a safe learning environment. Schools can monitor and manage students’ school devices, identify trending eSafety topics with keyword/phrase monitoring, detect vulnerable students with a contextual intelligence-based Risk Index, prevent inappropriate online exposure with age-appropriate internet filtering, and more.
Netsweeper
Netsweeper’s client filtering technology reduces the risks students will face online. Its systems help to protect students from inappropriate or explicit content, the dangers of social networking, online solicitation, and personal identity theft.
Network Connect Limited
Network Connect provides solutions designed to aid companies in protecting their employees from inappropriate and illegal content online. Their services include: high speed, secure internet connectivity, network security, content filtering and reporting.
Newsguard
NewsGuard’s journalists produce trust ratings to empower users and help them determine whether a site is reliable and transparents as they browse online news. Red or green icons and detailed ratings of more than 7200 news websites appear next to links on all the major search engines, social media sites, and platforms and are available for device-level protection and for network filtering.
Opendium
Opendium is a UK-based company developing internet filtering and monitoring solutions. Its systems help schools implement Safer Internet & Prevent guidelines.
Pimloc
Pimloc’s mission is to advance visual AI systems in the interests of people and their freedoms. Pimloc has developed a world leading platform for the ingestion, classification and protection of visual content. The platform powers two products for video security and analytics, and data privacy: one that identifies visual content, and the other that anonymises sensitive content.
Praesidio Safeguarding
Praesidio is an independent safeguarding agency which delivers strategic advice, research, training and investigations. It offers a range of services to help organisations improve their systems and approaches.
Privately SA
Privately SA is a technology company providing B2B online safety and age assurance solutions to online and offline businesses. Privately’s ‘zero-data’ technology executes on the user’s device and is unique in the data privacy guarantees it can provide. Service providers and platforms can use Privately’s on-device moderation and on-device age assurance to make apps, games and devices safer, age aware, and compliant to privacy and child protection regulation.
Qumodo
Qumodo is a research and development company created to combine the best people, with the most powerful AI to build a better society. Qumodo offers expert training, advice and specialist products, with particular focus on the detection, moderation and removal of harmful content.
R;pple
R;pple is an online interceptive tool designed to ensure more help and support is provided to individuals who are conducting searches relating to self-harm or suicide. R;pple provides an immediate, vibrant display on a user’s device once they have been flagged as searching for online content relating to self-harm or suicide, and consists of a message of hope as well as a selection of mental health resources in a range of different communicative options (call, text, webchat) from free, established and 24/7 charity services.
www.ripplesuicideprevention.com
Raven Science
Raven Science’s mission is to make the world a safer place to live in. Their advanced cyber solutions are developed from cutting edge academic research to assist law enforcement agencies and social media hosts find, classify, and analyse extremist terrorist propaganda found online.
RM PLC
RM SafetyNet supports online safeguarding policies and the implementation of a balanced curriculum in schools. The company’s technology safeguards devices brought into school when they’re connected to the network. Schools can add their own filtering preferences and adjust access for different users.
SafeToNet
SafeToNet keeps children safe online via its pioneering suite of AI tools that detect and filter in real-time threats such as bullying, abuse, aggression and sextortion. The software runs on-device and operates on smart phones, tablets, laptops, wearables and IOT devices. Its pioneering live-stream video analyser detects and prevents in real-time both the recording of sexual content and its consumption including CSAM. SafeToNet’s software is privacy-centric and balances a child’s rights to privacy with the need to keep them safe online. SafeToNet sells its software to business partners who wish to comply with online safety legislation and safeguard children online.
Samurai Labs
Samurai protects children and communities from online violence. Samurai’s Autonomous Community Guardians enable online communities, products and networks to proactively transform toxicity and abuse into healthy human dialogue. Designed for performance, transparency and control, Samurai Guardians are trusted to intervene immediately and autonomously to keep online environments safe.
Schools Broadband
Talk Straight/Schools Broadband provides secure Ultrafast internet connectivity for schools, MATs, Local Authorities and businesses. They specialise in advanced cloud-based technologies providing education-specific content filtering, filtered 4G and top-ranking Fortinet security.
Securium
Securium is an advanced cyber-intelligence company offering sophisticated and highly-scalable software for content and conversation analysis to enable protection of both businesses and individuals. Securium offers automated control over harmful and illegal content and conversations to address problems such as the detection and prevention of child grooming/exploitation, propagation of hate speech and misinformation/disinformation, and reputational impact due to online brand abuse and intellectual property infringement.
Securus Software
Securus allows schools to monitor activity on ALL school managed and BYOD devices, providing screenshot and detailed evidence of inappropriate activity and potential risks. This includes off-site learning, thus providing full safeguarding protection. A fully managed service is available where Securus experts will monitor activity on behalf of the school.
Semantics 21
Semantics 21 produces state-of- the-art digital forensics software to analyse and grade images and videos; empowering law enforcement to combat child sexual exploitation. Its products significantly reduce the time and cost of investigating child sexual exploitation, terrorism and other crimes; and help to minimise the mental toll of viewing horrific content.
Senso
Senso uses more than 20 years safeguarding knowledge to deliver safeguarding monitoring with comprehensive keyword libraries, visual threat detection, real-time alerts, and centralised reports for multi-school setups. Senso is cloud-based and can monitor Microsoft Teams Chat for inappropriate keywords and images, on any device, anywhere.
Serelay
Serelay enables mobile device users to capture photos and videos that can be verified quickly, conclusively and at scale.
Signify
Signify has developed a powerful AI-driven response to online abuse called Threat Matrix. The proactive monitoring system is able to detect online threat, discrimination and abuse across a number of social media platforms. With the ability to identify bad actors behind the accounts and allow clients to take real world action to protect athletes, staff, officials and brand reputation.
Smoothwall
Smoothwall by Qoria offers a range of student safety solutions including Web Filtering (used by c. 40% of UK schools); Monitoring (24/7 Managed Service) to flag incidents or concerns as they happen; and Record Manager to log wellbeing and safeguarding concerns, whether they occur online or offline, within a secure student timeline.
Sportradar
Sportradar provide intelligence and investigation solutions to sporting federations, law enforcement, government agencies, clubs, anti-doping organisations and the gaming industry, and have developed a portfolio of products to assist organisations in combatting and / or profiling those involved in match-fixing, inside-information, scout fraud, courtsiding, betting contrary to organisation rules, illegal gambling, advantage play, money laundering and compliance issues.
Standing on Giants
Standing on Giants is the world’s first agency for businesses that want to build a brand-owned, online community. Born from the team that created giffgaff, Standing on Giants now works with companies around the world including Airbnb, O2, Tesco Bank and E.ON, engaging their customers through safe and thriving online communities.
StrawberrySocial Limited
StrawberrySocial is experience-led, with a mature and diverse team that specialise in brand protection and online safety, trusted by NSPCC, NHS Digital and many charities. Services include moderation, community management, crisis support and best practice safety provision. The focus is on keeping brand audiences and charity communities safe 24/7/365.
SuperAwesome
SuperAwesome powers the kids digital media ecosystem. Its kidtech is used by hundreds of brands and content-owners to enable safe digital engagement with the global kids audience. Built specifically to ensure total digital privacy (COPPA/GDPR-K) for kids, SuperAwesome’s technology footprint reaches almost half a billion kids globally. SuperAwesome was acquired by Epic Games in 2020.
Superfast Schools
Superfast Schools (provided by iCT4 Limited) offer fast, secure connectivity to schools, with advanced safeguarding tools, detailed and compliant online activity monitoring and multi-level cybersecurity solutions built in.
Tech Against Terrorism
Tech Against Terrorism is a public-private partnership and supports the tech industry in tackling terrorist exploitation of the internet, whilst respecting human rights. Their work is global and focuses on supporting tech companies in improving their policies and enforcement mechanisms through their mentorship programme. Tech Against Terrorism also built the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP), a tool that supports tech companies in swiftly disrupting terrorist use of their platforms.
The Social Element
The Social Element is a consultancy-led social media agency that works with some of the world’s biggest brands to ensure their social media is creating genuine human connections with consumers whilst protecting their brand through community management, insights, social listening and content moderation.
Tootoot
Tootoot is the award-winning platform and app that makes it simple for children and young people to report anything from bullying to a mental health concern. The simple-to-use app makes it easier for children and young people to speak-up and gives them confidence that their concerns are being taken seriously. Staff can respond to and manage concerns effectively using tootoot’s case-management feature, building up a chronology from start to finish. Tootoot is trusted by over 500,000 children and young people within Education and Sports organisations globally.
TrustElevate
TrustElevate is an identity RegTech service that enables companies handling under 16s’ data to comply with a raft of regulations including GDPR, PSD2 and e-Privacy Regulation. TrustElevate verifies under-16s’ ages and for under-13s it verifies parental responsibility so a parent can give consent to data processing, purchasing and access.
Unitary AI
Unitary provides automated moderation to keep platforms, users and advertisers safe online. Unitary specialises in image and video analysis, using state-of-the-art computer vision technology to detect inappropriate or unsafe content. Unitary’s Moderation API prevents harm to users, and Unitary’s Risk API ensures advertiser safety, by categorising content according to the GARM brand safety and suitability framework.
Veracity Collective Ltd
Veracity Collective provides specialist training in the subjects of Counter Disinformation, Counter Misinformation, Critical Thinking, and Open Source Intelligence. Veracity brings world leading experts in those disciplines together to provide a range of services to support information integrity. Veracity work with specialised tech companies who are developing novel software solutions to help to secure information integrity and protect against disinformation.
VerifyMyAge
VerifyMyAge offers seamless age assurance and age verification solutions for any online product, service or business. VerifyMyAge provides the widest range of verification and assurance methods and currently operates in the UK, France and Germany.
Verime
VeriMe provides anonymous age verification technologies for use in online environments. It’s primary methodology involves the use of a UK registered mobile phone to establish if the owner is over the age of 18. VeriMe holds the esteemed PAS 1296 certification for age verification, its software operates in accordance with GDPR requirements.
VigilAI
Vigil AI detects, categorises and evaluates child abuse content with no human interaction. The team behind Vigil AI includes some of the UK’s leading experts in automated content analysis, combining deep CSE domain knowledge with expertise in cutting-edge machine learning and image recognition.
Vistalworks
Vistalworks’ intelligence software is used by governments, ecommerce platforms and industry groups to target harmful online content and products sold illegally to the UK and EU. Built in conjunction with enforcement agencies, the software identifies and risk-scores threats across a broad range of illicit online selling and content, then enables targeted, preventative action. Vistalworks was named by DSIT as one of the Most Innovative Cyber SMEs of 2023.
W2
W2 provides global age verification (AV) and associated services, using data sources such as credit reference and utility agencies as well as automating document capture and verification to help ensure that customers are an appropriate age for specific online interactions.
Wave 9
Wave 9 provides education specific managed internet, web filtering and security as to keep students safe online.
White Bullet Solutions Ltd
White Bullet’s technology tracks advertising on risky websites and apps and determines which brands are funding them through ad revenue and who placed the ads. The system also allows for notice sending to advertisers and for blocking ads at the ad company level. This is a tool for stopping ad revenue to illegal websites.
YOTI LTD
Yoti offers age and identity verification technologies, including AI-based age estimation of human faces, ID-document based verification solutions as well as the full range of database, mobile and CRA checks. Designed with scale and inclusivity in mind, these technologies help platforms and kids sites moderate users’ age and handle parental consent checks in a simple, sound and innovative way. Solutions are available to integrate via mobile and web APIs and SDKs.
YourDataKey
YourDataKey provides real-time validation and re-validation of the individual you are engaged with; ensures that your organisation exceeds the requirements of local legislation and can prove it! transaction by transaction. A reliable Digital identity, trusted by the population and organisations, is a core component in the removal of online financial and social abuse.
Copyright
All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
You may re-use this publication (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence.
This document is also available on our website at gov.uk
Designed by Pale Blue Dot, Belfast palebluedot.tv