Employee Internet Management is Essential:
Your Company’s Productivity and Security are at Stake

By Gary Points, Practice Manager of Network Infrastructure

Today, nearly every organization uses the Internet to accomplish daily tasks, and help meet overall business goals and objectives.  The Internet has become as necessary in business as pen and paper.  Each morning your employees arrive at work, turn on their computers, and begin accessing Internet related resources.  They may send e-mails, perform research, or participate in web-based conferencing sessions.  However, employees may also be spending time following sports scores, visiting MySpace sites, or watching the latest YouTube video.  Each of these activities may at the surface seem harmless enough; however, every wasted hour impacts the top and bottom line of a company’s financial success.  Furthermore, allowing such uncontrolled access to the Internet may jeopardize the security of the corporate network.  So, how is a company to know when their employees are being non-productive or posing a security risk to the organization?  Our recommendation is that you implement an Employee Internet Management solution. 

Employee Internet Management, or EIM, solutions have existed for many years.  In fact, Polar Systems has provided these solutions for over 5 years.  Polar Systems partnered with Websense, Inc of San Diego, CA in 2002, and began deploying and integrating their Websense Enterprise and Websense Web Security Suite of products.  Unfortunately, although small-to-medium sized businesses faced the same issues and threats as did larger organizations, the acquisition costs were often prohibitive.  For years we’ve been researching and asking for a solution designed and priced exclusively for the small-to-medium business market.  I’m pleased to say that Websense has recently released just such a solution – Websense Express. 

Websense Express addresses Internet risk across five main areas: 

Productivity Loss
Studies have shown that the average employee spends more than 3 hours per week on non-business related websites.  Typical sites incurring productivity loss may be sports or news-related websites, social networking sites such as MySpace, or streaming sites such as YouTube.  Websense Express policies may be implemented to restrict access to over 90 categories of websites, putting the control of authorized Internet content back in the hands of the business. 

Security Risk
Over the years, the Internet has become much more dynamic and content rich; however, along with such exciting transformations also come increasingly sophisticated and deceptive web-based threats.  In fact, studies have shown that 79% of all technology threats are now web-based.  Through casual web browsing, company computers may become infected with malicious software, spyware, keyloggers or subject to phishing attacks.  The impact on a business could mean downtime, revenue loss, IT remediation costs, or a compromise of sensitive corporate data.  Websense Express policies may be enabled which block access to suspicious websites or software, stop back-channel transmissions to spyware hosts, and provide reports identifying those PCs which are currently infected. 

Legal Liability
Much of the content available on the Internet may be deemed objectionable.  However, without Acceptable Internet-Use policies, and a mechanism to enforce those policies, the company is often left at legal risk.  Websense Express can restrict access to categories of sites such as adult content, gambling, hacking, or Peer-to-Peer sharing sites.  Peer-to-peer sites pose the legal risk of employees downloading copyright materials, and storing them on company assets.  Websense Express can again block access to these sites and services.

Network Bandwidth
Due to the increased use of the Internet as a media and entertainment outlet many websites have streaming audio and video content.  Unfortunately, when streaming content is left unrestricted, it can create a significant drain on the overall network bandwidth.  Many business representatives have acknowledged this is a known behavior in their organizations, but have had no manageable way of controlling it.  Websense Express can provide this type of insight into, and control over, your network.

Reporting
Across all areas previously described, Websense Express can provide automated reports for executives, management teams, or Human Resources and IT staff.  The solution comes bundled with 20 canned reports highlighting the most common questions businesses ask.  Additionally, there are intuitive drill-down capabilities to provide extremely granular detail when necessary, or for creating customized reports which could be scheduled and automated. 

We at Polar Systems are very excited about the release of Websense Express, and we believe our clients will be too.  Websense Express provides the kind of turn-key solution our clients have been asking for over the last few years.  The solution is appliance-based, comes pre-loaded with all the necessary software, and includes daily database updates to ensure a business is protected from current threats.   Polar Systems consults with our clients to design effective policies, create customized reports, provide administrative-level training, and in some cases remotely manage the entire solution. 

If you are interested in hearing more about this solution, and ways in which to make your business more productive, secure, and profitable please contact us at 503-775-4410.

Gary Points is the Practice Manager of Network Infrastructure at Polar Systems. With 11 years of network service and consulting experience, Gary has consulted to state and local governments, startups, and professional offices throughout the Pacific Northwest.  Gary has been with Polar Systems since 2002, and provides business consulting in the areas of IT management, project management, and network design & architecture.