The problem is as old as employee workstations with Internet access themselves. And employers haven’t made much headway in solving it — until now.

Paraben Corp. of Orem, UT, has demonstrated a new forensic program designed to let employers identify pornographic images on their employees’ workstations.

What makes the Paraben system different is that it analyzes all images it finds and flags those in which it detects ‘suspect’ content. The software rates content as clean or suspect based on a collection of sophisticated analysis parameters designed to detect nudity and other porn indicators. The package then grades flagged images at one of three levels of severity as defined by criteria programmed into the package.

Paraben says the network-based monitoring system is capable of detecting suspect images in real time, as they are downloaded from the Internet to specific workstations on a corporate network.

While the (US)$17,000 estimated cost to install the system on a 500-seat corporate network might sound steep to some, lawyers say that’s ‘coffee money’ compared to the extremely costly lawsuits employers can face when porn shows up on their servers.