NetSTAR Announces inCompass 4.0 - A Scalable Web Categorization and Threat Intelligence Platform for OEM Security Vendors

SALT LAKE CITY, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSTAR Global Inc., the global leader in OEM web categorization, IP reputation, and threat intelligence solutions, today announced the release of inCompass 4.0, a major architectural evolution of its industry-leading URL categorization and web filtering SDK.

Daniel Ashby, Chief Operating Officer at NetSTAR Global, stated "with inCompass 4.0, NetSTAR is transforming our trusted categorization engine into a scalable, service-oriented categorization platform designed to power modern Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), DNS filtering, Secure Web Gateway (SWG), firewall, CASB, endpoint security, SD-WAN, and network security solutions through our global OEM and Telco partners." He continued by sharing "we are excited about the wide range of deployment options that this provides to our Partners and their customers. We are already aware of several new solutions that our OEM and Telco Partners will be bringing to market, utilizing the new NetSTAR inCompass 4.0 solution, and it's very exciting."

For more than two decades, NetSTAR inCompass has delivered high-accuracy URL categorization, IP categorization, reputation scoring, and encrypted traffic intelligence to OEM partners worldwide. Version 4.0 represents the most significant architectural update in the platform's history.

From Web Categorization Engine to Categorization Platform

Unlike previous versions, inCompass 4.0 fundamentally changes how the system operates.

While earlier releases offered local, hybrid, and cloud deployments, the underlying architecture remained monolithic. With 4.0, NetSTAR introduces a service-oriented design that enables:

• Independent scaling of categorization services
• Separation of database and categorization workloads
• Improved fault isolation and system resiliency
• Horizontal scalability across distributed environments
• Container-native deployment in Kubernetes and K3s

This shift enables security vendors to operate inCompass as a centralized web filtering and URL intelligence backbone across multiple products and environments.

Built for Modern Security Architectures

inCompass 4.0 introduces native support for:

• gRPC and HTTP-based communication
• Cloud-native deployment models
• Containerized infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes, K3s)
• Distributed scaling across virtual machines and edge appliances

This enables OEM vendors to deploy scalable cloud web filtering, DNS security, firewall categorization, CASB content inspection, and SaaS application intelligence without maintaining local database copies or tightly coupled services.

The new gRPC client library allows multiple products, telemetry pipelines, and decision engines to connect to a centralized categorization cluster — supporting modern AI-driven cybersecurity platforms and multi-stage threat detection systems.

Enhanced Performance for High-Volume Environments

inCompass 4.0 separates read-heavy categorization workloads from write-heavy database update processes. This ensures:

• Categorization traffic spikes do not impact database updates
• Improved performance for high-volume DNS filtering and web gateway deployments
• Better scalability for large telemetry ingestion environments
• Optimized infrastructure for phishing detection and malware URL intelligence

This architecture supports large-scale deployments serving ISPs, mobile operators, MSSPs, enterprise firewall vendors, endpoint security providers, and cloud security platforms.

Backward Compatible, Forward Focused

Despite the architectural transformation, inCompass 4.0 maintains full backward compatibility. Existing embedded deployments, daemon clients, and hybrid configurations continue to function without disruption.

This ensures OEM partners can upgrade at their own pace while gaining access to enhanced scalability, container-native deployment options, and improved operational flexibility.

Powering Web Filtering, DNS Security, and AI-Driven Threat Intelligence

With over 48 billion URLs and domains categorized and telemetry visibility across 1.8+ billion endpoints, NetSTAR's inCompass platform continues to deliver:

• High-accuracy URL categorization
• Real-time reputation scoring
• IP categorization and IP reputation intelligence
• Encrypted traffic categorization
• SaaS and web application identification
• Malware URL detection
• Phishing URL intelligence
• AI-powered web content classification

inCompass 4.0 lays the architectural foundation for future innovations in AI-assisted threat detection, pre-filtering before machine learning pipelines, centralized signal enrichment, and scalable web intelligence services.

About NetSTAR

Since 2001, NetSTAR has been the global leader in OEM internet categorization and threat intelligence solutions. NetSTAR provides URL categorization, IP categorization, web application intelligence, phishing and malware threat feeds, and reputation scoring to more than 275 OEM partners worldwide. NetSTAR technologies power web filtering, DNS filtering, firewall security, CASB, endpoint protection, and secure web gateway solutions across the globe.

For more information, visit https://netstar.ai.

Media Contact:
Thomas Ashby
801-828-8926
[email protected]

SOURCE NetSTAR Global Inc.