Version history
By 1997, three years after Forcepoint was founded, the company had published version 3 of its software.[36] Version 3.0 introduced the software's first graphical, web-based administrative user interface.[37] At the time, Forcepoint's software was only used to prevent employees from viewing certain types of content at work, but in 2006 features were added to detect when employees were attempting to visit websites suspected of hosting malicious code.[38]
In 2007 Websense introduced a product to control the content a user could see on social media websites,[39] an endpoint security product,[40] a website reputation ranker,[41] and a small business version.[42] Additionally, a product was added to the Websense suite claimed to identify sensitive files in un-secure locations on the corporate network and looks for records of those files being transmitted.[43]
Available filtering categories on Websense included "Professional and Worker Organizations" (such as trade unions), "Sites sponsored by or providing information about political parties and interest groups" (such as civil rights organisations), "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest", "Sex education", "Sites that provide information about or promote religions not specified in Traditional Religions", and "Sports".[44] A 2008 study on the use of Websense within the Technical Colleges of Georgia found that only two categories were blocked in all of the colleges surveyed, and that 39 categories out of the 43 listed were blocked by some, but not all, colleges, with numbers ranging from two colleges blocking a given category to 23 out of the 24 responents.[45] In a 2005, report the Rhode Island branch of the American Civil Liberties Union called Websense a deeply flawed technology. It further noted that, although the blocking technology had improved over the years since 2002, it still remained a "blunt instrument" and that in public libraries equipped with Websense people of all ages were "still denied access to a wide range of legitimate material."[46]
Websense introduced its first appliance product in 2009.[47]
In 2010, some products were consolidated into the Triton software, which became responsible for increasingly large portions of the company's revenue.[48] In February 2012, Forcepoint released a cloud-based suite of IT security products for smartphones, tablets, laptops, USB drives, and other mobile devices.[49] Upgrades to the suite in 2012 added the ability to identify confidential information in an image file.[50] Three new products or revisions were introduced in 2016, all focused on security risks caused by employees.[51]
