ISLAMABAD- Pakistan has decided to launch an internet firewall like Chinato Block the undesired content on the internet.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is planning to develop and setupa sophisticated turn-key Technical solution named “Web Management Solution(WMS)”, at a national level, for identifying and blocking access to theobjectionable internet content and websites.
A request for proposal, for the development and deployment of the nationalfirewall, has been issued by the regulator.
The authority has widened the scope of work for the WMS in which content offollowing topics will be identified and blocked on the internet for thegeneral public.
– Blasphemous. – Pornographic – Indecent or immoral – Anti-State – Contempt of court – Law and order – Incitement to an offense – Sectarian – Others as stated in law for time being in force to be described unlawful according to Pakistan Electronic Crime Act (PECA).
PTA said that it wants a solution with an ability to identify IP addressesand information about users who are are accessing unlawful andobjectionable content.
The solution is going to have an ability to display a warning to the userupon accessing unlawful web content.
It will have the ability to restrict delivery of unlawful content to thepublic without affecting any other content being served by the same server,site or domain.
Firewall is likely to be designed as a crawler, a program thatsystematically browses the World Wide Web in order to create an index ofdata with inbuilt and auto-learning functionality to automatically identifyand classify unlawful content and make it unavailable for the public.
The system will provide real-time analysis of Internet traffic toautomatically identify unlawful internet content (i.e. web pages, images,videos, words, applications etc.) and block it for public viewership as andwhen required.
National firewall will reportedly be able to classify websites (i.e.social, pornographic, Financial, sports, etc.). It will have an ability tocollect countrywide statistics related to websites (i.e. number of timesbeing accessed; the number of sessions etc.).
More detail about Web Solution Management could be viewed herelink>.
The internet watchdog has sought applications from service providers forcomplete deployment, management and maintenance of the new internetmechanism. It will include supply, installation, and configuration ofapplicable hardware/software/middleware to establish Web ManagementSolution (WMS) for live management of Internet traffic passing throughcountry’s internet gateways.
– PTA wants selected solution providers to provide training to designated PTA Human Resource for carrying out Hardware and Software configuration and Operations of the WMS. – PTA or its designated team should be able to easily operate WMS and configure changes to tailor the solution for on-going developments in the field. – WMS should be robust and scalable for supporting increases in International bandwidth and newer Internet technologies/protocols. – PTA wants WMS hardware and software support at no cost for a period of (03) three years.
The authority has given a deadline of March 08 to interested serviceproviders to submit their technical proposals along with budgets.