Grampian Police were one of the earliest adopters of Serendipity's MYiNTERNET solution in 2003. The Forces' Information Security Officer, Scott Chambers said at the time:

"MYiNTERNET is ideal for our complicated requirements and provides the Forces' Internet Administrators with complete peace of mind. The solution is highly secure which is obviously extremely important in our business and the activity logging functions extremely efficient when reporting is required".

In considering which product to buy to manage Internet Access for a mixed body of uniformed and non-uniformed staff, GPF evaluated MYiNTERNET against the leading competitive filter products in the market at that time.

The key challenge was to enable appropriate Internet access for a very diverse range of needs for different job roles and circumstances.

Internet Users in a police force obviously work round-the-clock on changing shift patterns; therefore any time-based access controls are irrelevant. In addition; although the Police Force has a strictly business purpose corporate policy for Internet and Email; it does not mandate that employees sign an 'Acceptable Use Policy', yet nevertheless has to meet it's own corporate governance liabilities in this respect.

Some Force Internet users need to carry out legitimate investigation work on the web relevant to detailed financial fraud, sexual abuse including paedophilia, and drug use. No standard filtering technology would readily facilitate this and most would over-present major policy breaches against 'entitled network users just trying to do their job'.

Force Internet users in this circumstance are now largely managed under the following group profiles, with certain individuals provided with unique, personal policy profiles.

Internet User Group 1 - Not Signed 'Acceptable Use Policy'
Log-on to network and through Directory Services Integration is presented with business purpose only web categories relevant to their job function.

Internet User Group 2 - Signed 'Acceptable Use Policy'
Log-on to network and through Directory Services Integration is presented with (a) business purpose only web categories relevant to their job function and (b) the capability to use the wider Internet under 'Acceptable Use Policy' rules. They are encouraged to submit any 'new' business purpose web sites that they utilise for inclusion within the web categories made available to User Group1. Specific profiles can be created for sub-groups here as deemed relevant by the Information Security Officer.

Internet User Group 3 - Require the widest access to sensitive areas of the Internet for validated business purpose research.
Log-on to network and through Directory Services Integration is presented with unrestricted Internet Access. All activity is however fully monitored. Any web sites that are agreed would normally 'fall foul' of the 'Acceptable Use Policy' are logged by the Internet User Group 3 in a specific MYiNTERNET content category that is held only on Police Force Servers to be shared with approved 'Investigation Team Group Members'. The individual and the organisation are equally protected in normally difficult circumstances.