Marriott International Joins the Internet Watch Foundation; Deploys Cisco Technology to Combat Online Child Sexual Abuse Material

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[{"type":"text","content":"Collaboration Marks Marriott's Next Step in Journey to Advance Human Rights \nBETHESDA, Md., Feb. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Marriott International announced today it has joined forces with UK-based nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to combat online child exploitation by using technology solutions to restrict guest network access to websites with child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in its hotels. The collaboration will be the first of its kind for the hotel industry and marks the next step in Marriott's commitment to address a critical human rights issue for the industry. Marriott recently marked a significant milestone in its anti-trafficking efforts, training one million associates at Marriott hotels to recognize and respond to signs of human trafficking.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nIn January 2023, Marriott established a new Global Property Network Standard to have hotels block access to websites with CSAM from the hotels' guest network. As part of this initiative with the IWF, Marriott is working with Cisco to implement its security technology to block access to CSAM-containing webpages on the IWF's blocked URL list.\n\"Marriott is proud to be the first hospitality company to join the IWF and is utilizing Cisco's security technology to restrict access to exploitative materials through hotel networks. As a leader in the hospitality industry and a company that believes in putting people first, Marriott has committed to fighting human trafficking and other pressing human rights issues,\" said Anthony Capuano, Chief Executive Officer for Marriott International. \"This initiative builds on our anti-trafficking efforts and survivor empowerment work, honors our core values and upholds Marriott's commitment to human rights.\"\nAccording to the IWF, Marriott's membership provides access to the IWF's list of CSAM-containing webpages to better enable filtering and blocking. Each webpage is manually assessed by the IWF analysts to confirm the presence of criminal content. Once the CSAM is removed from the webpage, the IWF will also remove the webpage from the list, ensuring the list is up-to-date and webpages are not unnecessarily blocked.\n\"In 2022 the IWF identified and removed more than 255,000 webpages containing child sexual abuse imagery. This equates to millions of individual images and videos of children being exploited. It...

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