The internet has been a great business tool for business of all sizes, and so most organizations today consider access to the internet essential to employees. At the same time, the free-for-all internet access approach can cause a lot of potential problems.

 

What if employees spend too much time browsing at non-work related sites? What if employee download banned files and bring in danger malware or spyware? Loss of productivity is one thing, increasing in security threats is really a major concern.

 

It is very easy for employee to waste an hour or two each day through Internet activities during the business hours, and that is a huge hidden cost to any business. Employee can easily spend an hour each day simply by checking a few personal emails, sports scores, financial news, stock pricing, and facebook. Imaging if your company has 80 employees and each of them spends an average of one hour a day on non-work related internet activities, that is 80 hours of employee time wasted in just one day! that is equal to two employee's one week of work!! Wow.

 

Employee time waste is just one of the several downsides to free-for-all internet access during office hours. There are a number of security risks involved too. While your IT team and the management can turn a blind eye to employees internet activity, they would not take it kindly to an infection from malware or spyware that could result in downtime, loss of business and even credibility.

 

Do you think company policy is good enough to deter employee from wild interactive activity? Despite IT policy and desktop security solution your IT team already have in place, employee will continue to push to the limit and visit their inappropriate web sites, download 'banned' file types such as illegal music, video, and game on company network resource. Other than just time waste, what damage can be done with non-work related Internet activity? The potential infection with malware and/or spyware that can bring down the whole network.

 

Companies have the responsibility to provide a safe and secure Internet access, monitor and manage internet usage throughout the organization, block all sites deemed inappropriate to employee using the network. Companies need to protect their network from users who access inappropriate websites, web sites that were not productive to the business in the first place.

 

Without the ability to exercise some form of management over what your users are browsing, you leave yourself open to legal liability in a variety of ways.  Provide your employees with safe, well managed access to the Internet while on your premises and you will safeguard your company, your network, your employees, and your bottom line.

 

If you find your existing web content filtering or network security appliance is not flexible enough to control, monitor, and manage internet access, consider GFI WebMonitor.

 

Rather than blocking everyone, GFI WebMonitor gives IT administrators the ability to allow or block access to selective sites such as social network, P2P, game, and adult material sites, to selective groups, users, or IP. You can set time or bandwidth threshold base on per user or per IP basis.  It’s also possible to block certain features within a webpage, for example, all .wmv files can be blocked so that streaming will not be permitted, even if the audio or video clip appears within a webpage.

 

If you don't see what is happening, how do you control it? GFI WebMonitor lets you generate reports about Internet usage at your workplace. IT Admin or management can now see which sites were being visited regularly, who spend the most time on a certain web site, which web sites consume the most Internet bandwidth, who download what and install unauthorized software on their PC, who is the top policy breaker, which sites needed to be blocked because of inappropriate content, thus reducing the amount of cyberslacking taking place. By scanning downloads from the Internet, it reduces the risk of viruses and malicious downloads being downloaded onto the network.

 

GFI WebMonitor reports make it so easy for the management to track internet usage, monitor employees and find who may be spending too much time on non-work relate sites, or using too much network bandwidth watching videos or download files.

 

To make it flexible for you to implement only what you needs, GFI WebMonitor is available in three editions. For best pratise, The Unified Protection edition is strongly recommended.

 

WebFilter Edition includes a dynamic database of 205,000,000+ URLs. These websites are then categorized based on the content of the website: You can decide to allow, block, or quarantine the category or the site. For example, MySpace is categorized as a social networking site. A policy can be created to block MySpace completely or a less restrictive approach can be taken like blocking it during the work day but allowing it during lunch or before and after normal work hours.

 

WebSecurity Edition – using multiple anti-virus engines, this edition scans web traffic protecting your network against viruses, malware/spyware and phishing websites, simply stated it scans each download before it is accessed by the users. For example, if an employee goes to a website and wants to download a free video game, this edition of GFI WebMonitor gives you the option to allow, block or quarantine the file (or file type). Games may be littered with malware and viruses so it may be wise to include this in your Internet Usage Policy.

 

Unified Protection Edition is the most comprehensive solution and is a combination of both the WebFilter and the WebSecurity Editions. This is the most comprehensive web monitoring solution providing both content filtering and protection against security threats. The Unified Protection Edition is generally used when companies are implementing a total web-use policy. This edition allows you to implement the ideal Internet monitoring and access control solution. It allows the management to set boundaries for site browsing and control downloading and installing of unauthorized software.