Relying On A Good Luck Charm?

Are you relying on a good luck charm? Carrying a four-leaf clover might work for leprechauns. But when it comes to Internet abuse by employees, you’re gonna need more than sheer luck…

Did you know that…

• 70% of all web traffic to Internet pornography sites occurs during the work hours of 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
• Non-work-related Internet surfing results in up to a 40% loss in productivity each year at American businesses.
• According to a survey by International Data Corp (IDC), 30% to 40% of Internet access is spent on non-work-related browsing, and a staggering 60% of all online purchases are made during working hours.

The list goes on, and the costs to your company can be staggering.  Risks random web sites can expose your business to include malware, viruses, fraud, violence, lawsuits, loss of confidential/proprietary data and more. Even social sites, while perhaps not quite as risky, can have a major impact on productivity.

Web content filtering is now crucial to network security – not to mention employee productivity – in this up and coming environment. It can be deployed in a number of ways, but basically they boil down to two: inline and endpoint filtering.

Inline Web Filtering

Inline Web filtering is the technique in which the control is installed at the Internet gateway to the organization (your router), which intercepts all Internet traffic and applies applicable filtering policies to allow or block Web access requests. These solutions do not require any component of the application to be installed at the endpoint (device).

With inline web filtering, there’s no need to expend resources managing content at each endpoint – your employees and their computers, whether desktop or mobile. Inline filtering not only saves bandwidth, it goes a long way toward mitigating cyberthreats. For securing activities that take place within your network, it’s a critical and potent strategy.

Yet, with the shift away from traditional office-bound work routines to a work-from-anywhere culture, the effectiveness of inline filtering has diminished. When employees access the web outside your network’s gateways – via home networks, hotels, coffee shops, etc. – their devices become vulnerable to attack. And any employee can carry an infected machine into and out of your company’s building and network on any given day, exposing your entire intranet to infections. And that’s why so many companies are moving to endpoint-based web filtering to complement their inline filtering.

Endpoint-Based Web Filtering

Endpoint-based Web filtering provides a solution to the emerging problem of protecting an endpoint from Internet-bound infections regardless of the gateway it connects to. This type of solution requires a piece of software be present in the machine itself, which receives a predefined filtering policy from the central server (an intranet gateway- or cloud-based server).

The downside is that it must be rolled out and maintained at all endpoints. That being said, one advantage of endpoint-based filtering is that it addresses stringent employee privacy regulations that are quickly becoming the norm in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Because it keeps browsing-pattern information within the user’s device, endpoint-based filtering provides a fairly non-intrusive way to handle employee privacy concerns.

And finally, while endpoint-based filtering really is the only way to protect a network without boundaries, as most companies now have, ideally it works hand in glove with inline filtering.

Forget the Charms – We’ve Got This!

We recommend implementing not only endpoint filtering and inline, but also a training program for your employees to encourage safe practices and assure compliance with your company’s web security policies and procedures. This way you don’t have to keep Relying On A Good Luck Charm. 🙂

Want to make sure all gaps are sealed and you won’t have to count on a four-leaf clover, a rabbit’s foot or knocking on wood to keep your network secure? Contact us today at (937)291-9900 or Support@netxonline.net for a customized Web Content Filtering Review and Analytical Report on your system.