Interview: Ken Knapton, CTO of the year

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on May 10

The primary goal of the Utah Tech Spotlight is to bring more exposure and awareness to the Utah Tech community about the Utah Tech community. As such, we are very excited to have had the opportunity to conduct the following interview with Ken Knapton, CTO of Content Watch and Net Nanny, and the Utah CTO of the year. I apologize in advance for the length of the post, but I think you will agree that it is great stuff.

1: Utah is obviously a state with significant ties to the Church and morality. Additionally, it has a very young population. However, when the issue of protecting our children on the web comes up most parents are currently not taking steps, but seem eager for advice. What do you feel is the hurdle out there that has prevented more significant adoption of protective technologies?

[Ken]: We recently worked very closely with Microsoft as they developed their Parental Contols on the Windows Vista platform. This topic came up in our discussions. Surprisingly, their research indicated that roughly 80% of parents wanted better parental controls, but only 10% indicated that they would implement them. I found this dichotomy very ironic. As parents, we are all concerned about the dangers on the Internet, but for some reason we are not willing to put in the effort to research our options and implement a solution.

As I have thought about this, I believe there are two main reasons for this nationally, with a third reason which is specifically applicable to Utah residents:

1. Parents who are technically-savvy know that any filter solution will sit between their browser and the Internet, and may slow down thier browsing experience. We pay for fast bandwidth, and are concerned about anything that might slow it down. They also know that a technical solution is not perfect, and will either block too much or too little, so they simply don’t implement it - possibly waiting for a more perfected technology to appear.

2. Those that are not technically-savvy usually don’t know enough about the technical solutions to know that there is even an option. Many of them even turn the administration of the computer over to their children, and what child will say “Hey mom- let’s put a filter on the computer”. Since these parents are not very technical, they have to rely on the advice of thier children, or their technically-savvy friends, who all tell them that a filter is a pain to install and maintain. This is not true, but they don’t know it.

3. Here in Utah we tend to have a “not in my backyard” mentality. While we believe that there are dangers on the Internet, we don’t believe that our children would succumb to them. Because of our strong religious background, we beleive that our children will shun these “bad” things if they happen to run accross them online. Unfortunately, even the best and most up-standing adults can fall into addiction from a single look at pornography - and our children are not immune either. As of today, according to Google Trends, Salt Lake City is #2 in the world for searches of “Pornography”. Lest you think that this is due to “research” of the topic, Salt Lake is also #1 for “Hot Girls”, and is in the top 10 for several other searches that lead directly to pornographic content. This is most definitely in our backyard.

2- You comment in your blog about technology not being the silver bullet to protecting our children, that there are additional steps that need to be taken. What do you see as one of the key “non-technology” areas where many parents fall down?

[Ken]: I will give you three key non-technical things that parents can do to protect their children:

1. Move the computer out of bedrooms. There is never a valid reason to have a computer in a bedroom. When asked about this topic, our Attorney General Mark Shurtleff stated that you should look for the place in your home where the carpet is most worn, and place the computer there. When the computer is in a location where anyone can see what people are doing, they are much less likely to wander into the dark byways of the Internet, or to linger there if they stumble upon it.

2. Take an interest in your children’s online activities. Know what they are doing online, and where they spend their time. Tal to them about what they do online, and follow this up by simply looking at the browser history. If there is no History, this is a sign that someone is trying to hide something. Know what chat rooms your children frequent, and who is on their Instant Message list. A study by the FBI recently declared that if you “frequent” chat rooms, there is a 100% chance of interacting with an online predator - parents need to be aware of these dangers. As parents, we need to know the difference between chat rooms and Instant Messaging, and we need to know with whom our children are communicating while online. Several online games these days have chat capabilities, and these are filled with child predators.

3. Teach them about the dangers of the Internet. Children need to know that they cannot trust everyone they meet online. Some predators will spend months gaining a child’s trust online before attempting to engage in inappropriate behavior (of course, some will jump right into it almost immediately as well). Write up the “Internet Usage Rules” for your home, and post them next to the monitor - include things like “never give out your last name, address, phone number” and “If you see something inappropriate, turn off the monitor and get mom or dad”.

3- Most of us have accidentally hit a porn site before, and have seen on Dateline how predators are hunting children in chat rooms . What do you see as the key danger to our children that tends to be overlooked?

[Ken]: That’s easy: Google. The “Safe Search” helps, but is far from perfect, and even with strict safe search turned on, many extremely innappropriate images can appear. Without Safe Search, it is a veritable mine field of pornography. Recently a customer of ours told us of a search term which, when entered into Google Image Search with safe search turned on, would bring up a hard-core pornographic image as the first search result. The search term itself was not sexual in nature, and one would never think it would lead to pornography, yet there it was. Google has been accused of being the largest purveyor of pornography on the Internet, and I have to believe that it is close to the truth. Unfortunately, our children turn to Google Image Search when working on research papers, and much of the time parents have no idea what their children are seeing in the results.

Here again, a little prevention in the way of blocking/monitoring software can help, and reviewing where your children went online would uncover exposure to pornography - whether accidental or not. Talking to them upfront, and asking them to come to you when they see something inappropriate is key. Notice I said “when”, not “if” - if they spend any significant amount of time online, they will see something inappropriate.

A close second with regard to dangers would be Chat rooms. They are extremely dangerous, and most parents don’t even know it. Letting your child into a chat room is like allowing them to enter a bar in every city throughout the world at the same time. Personally, I believe that children under 18 should be banned from every chat room. Even chat rooms that cater to children are dangerous, as child predators know that this is where to meet children. Stick to Instant Messaging, and know who is on your child’s “buddy” list.

4- On your blog you talk about the “Agile based process.” Can you give us an overview of how you have implemented that into your culture, and how it might seem converse to what companies generally do naturally?

[Ken]: Interesting question. In the “old days” of software development (which, in reality is not all that long ago) development happened in a serial fashion: the marketing team would spend months preparing tons of documentation regarding a software product, and then would negotiate with development regarding what is possible and what is not, then the development team would spend months (or years) implementing it. Once the code was written, the test team would get involved and make sure that the code the developers wrote matched up with what marketing documented. Finally, a product would emerge to the public - and usually this bear only minimal resemblance to what marketing originally envisioned. Even when it did match what marketing documented, enough time had passed that customers no longer actually wanted it.

The agile process is a way for all of the groups to work together to produce software much faster, and to meet customer needs in a more timely fashion. There is much less documentation, and more functioning programs that evolve to meet customers needs in real-time. At ContentWatch, we have averaged a customer release every 5 weeks for the past 2 years - each one with some bug fixes and some enhancements/new features. By using this methodology, we can listen to customers and respond to them very quickly. This is extrememly important in our field, since technology is always changing. For example, MySpace recently launched an Instant Messaging application. Our product will allow/deny access to Instant Messaging applications, and will log all IM conversations. However, when MySpace launched their new application, it was a surprise to us (and everyone else), and it was based on its own proprietary protocol, which our software did not recognize. Using the agile processes, we were able to identify this as a problem, research and develop a fix, and get this fix into the next version of our software (due out toward the end of this month).

As for the details regaring our implementation of these “agile” concepts, you will have to watch my blog for those - there is way too much to go into here. Suffice it to say that we operate much like an express train: if your feature is ready when the train leaves the station, it makes it into the next release. If not, you wait for the next train. It is surprising how well the analogy holds up with regard to software development processes - I expect this to be a blog topic in the near future, as many people have been asking me about this recently.

5- WordPerfect, CyberPath, Intel, AccessData, Content Watch, and now CTO of the year. Wow. What’s next? Where do you see yourself in the coming years?

[Ken]: It is such a different world from the prior generation, where people would work for the same company for 30+ years. When I finally made it into development at WordPerfect, I knew I had arrived in my dream job and that I would retire as a developer from there. I honestly thought that I would work at WordPerfect for my entire career. Man, was I wrong. It is a fast-paced industry we work in.

I have had a fun career thus far. Each company has had its share of challenges, and I have had the pleasure of working with some extremely talented individuals. I really don’t know where it will lead me, but I am having great fun on the ride. As for where I see myself in the coming years, the answer is “right here in Utah”. I have had many opportunities to move out of state, but simply didn’t want to leave. I know that this has limited my career in some ways, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love Utah, and I love being a small part of the High Tech industry here.

• Posted in Techno Rambling