Websense
More info
- Released
- 1994
- Type
- Security company
- Successor
- Forcepoint (2016)
The web filter that spent the 2000s standing between office workers and everything fun on the internet.
Websense was founded in San Diego in 1994 and sold URL filtering: a huge, constantly updated database sorting websites into categories, so an employer could block games, porn or news in a few clicks. For a generation of office staff, its block page was the closest they got to the football scores.
Data loss prevention and cloud filtering followed. In 2015 the company was bought by a consortium majority-owned by defence contractor Raytheon, and a year later it was renamed Forcepoint.