3 Compelling Reasons to Implement Network Internet Control
Having network Internet control in place is a must for any business to run smoothly. The Internet is an essential tool for most of your employees, so blocking it off completely is not an option. Instead you should implement proper network Internet control to prevent the following threats: bandwidth hogging, cyber-slacking and risks associated with malicious content.
1. Bandwidth Hogging
Recently I was at a client who was having issues with his Internet bandwidth. Every morning access to the Internet would slow down to a crawl but then improve in the afternoon. After a short period of network monitoring I discovered that his part-time secretary would turn on an Internet radio station during her morning shift and saturate the already limited bandwidth that was available. This scenario is very common in businesses and is aggravated when numerous employees decide to use streaming content. Content such as YouTube videos and online radio are bandwidth-hungry and can easily eat up bandwidth. This can have an effect on the entire company because critical systems could be impacted while other employees who need Internet access may not be able to do so effectively.
When implementing network Internet control, be sure to select a solution that is capable of distinguishing between streaming content and other traffic. This will allow you to selectively block traffic based on its bandwidth requirements.
2. Cyber-Slacking
The Internet is a great tool but it is also a temptation and employees will always find an excuse to waste time online instead of doing their job. Social networks, news portals and entertainment web sites, can waste many hours of your employees’ time; furthermore Instant Messaging (IM) can continuously disrupt their workflow throughout the day.
To counter this, you should have strict network Internet control policies – however this may come at a price. Tight Internet controls can hinder productivity for some employees who need unrestricted access for particular jobs. To strike a balance, some Internet control software packages should offer a feature called “Soft Blocking” that will allow you to over-ride block policies for certain trusted users or groups.
To counter the threat of IM clients, make sure you select a solution that is IM client aware. This will enable it to distinguish between normal Internet traffic and IM client conversations, and selectively block this type of communication.
3. Malicious Content
In a perfect world you might be able to trust all your employees and allow them to surf the net without restrictions. In a perfect world employees will be careful not to hog bandwidth, nor waste time nor chat with friends instead of working. In a perfect world, network Internet control would still be a requirement. While you could trust your employees, you can never trust the websites they visit.
The web is a dangerous place for the unwary. Malware is rife and comes in many forms: viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, key loggers and other malicious content. A recent study found that over 60,000 new malware strains are released into the wild every single day, making your employees more vulnerable than they have ever been before when browsing the Internet.
Good network Internet control software will automatically blacklist any website that is found serving malicious content. It does this by tracking new threats in real-time and keeping your blacklist updated so that you do not need to intervene manually.
Setting up smart bandwidth monitoring and, as a result, blocking, solves most of the problems you’ll hear in an office about system slowness. Even when you think you have a smart web-blocking system in place, there’s always some method that employees can find in order to stream content that is very bandwidth intensive. Using bandwidth usage as a requirement, you’re going to get 95% of the problem taken care of, and not have as many relevant complaints as far as blocked sites and content go.
Bandwidth hogging in the workplace also includes downloading movies and mp3 files at night. Some employees think that since no one is using the Internet after work hours, they might as well make use of it during the wee hours. Three of my co-workers are always downloading some DVD screeners and games at night.
Although doing this does not directly affect an organization’s productivity at work, however, in general this could still affect the Internet’s bandwidth and can still be considered as “bandwidth hogging”.
This is sometimes called the “idle system” argument, and people who believe in it claim that they might just as well be using the bandwidth whilst systems are idle.
The flaw with this argument is that the users of the system are in no way qualified to determine whether a system is idle or not, and indeed many systems like automatic updates and backups happen at night and require all the bandwidth they can take in order to finish by the next work day.
My Yahoo Messenger and Skype are always on all the time. I can’t live without them. For me, they’re more important than my web browser. They’re not just excellent tools with real-time communication features, they’re also a great media platform.
YM, for instance, allows you to listen to your favorite song hits. Skype, on the other hand, can be a good alternative to using cellphones. I myself load my Skype more often than my mobile phone. I use it to call and text all my contacts. I prefer it over my cellphone because my load never expires in Skype, which is a real value for me.
There are many legitimate reasons to use streaming media services such as the ones offered by Skype and Yahoo Messenger. It is important to identify the employees needs and also perform monitoring, to ensure that legitimate usage of software does not hinder other employees.
@Mr. Coffee Lover – in some aspects this kind of hogging is even worse. For instance, if updates are scheduled for download at night, when presumably there is less traffic, updates might fail because of all the movies somebody is downloading then.
Jason – you are absolutely right, I have seen this happen before. People who download DVDs and games at night are guilty of bandwidth hogging, just as Mr. Coffee Lover says, and just like you say, can be even worse in many situations.