Your Next PR Nightmare Could Be Only a Click Away

In the age of Enron and failed intelligence, scandals remain the rage of the front page. Companies want to see positive spin and not scandal related material published. Imagine for a moment the educational software site where employees are identified as regular visitors to pornography websites. The effect to such a company’s image could be devastating.

Leaks, Peeks & Sneaks

There are numerous security risks facing companies with internal networks. Primary among their concerns are stifling leaks and backdoors that allow hackers to penetrate their firewalls. But the threat from within the company may prove to be more devastating to a company’s reputation and subsequently their stock value and much more.

Employees face a four-pronged attack from blended threats across the board. Phishing and pharming are two of the more popular attacks that face Internet users everyday. Typically sent via email, phishing attacks depend on the concern of an employee to take care of matters ranging from personal to financial. The uneducated user will click an embedded link and leave the network vulnerable to an attack.

The sophistication of these attacks can penetrate even the most complex of security systems unless user error can be compensated for. The most popular forms of phishing involve instant messaging and emails. Despite the widely known understanding of spoofing, most users do not expect to receive messages from spoofed accounts.

Increasing a systems security perimeter can block instant messaging ports and prevent such external security breaches. Network security devices can also block web requests to URLs presented in instant messages. Better still, URLs or web requests from internal users can be compared to a database of acceptable websites and disallowed or denied if they do not match.

Living on the Fringe

Installing spyware and malware is another by-product of visiting less than secure websites. Internet users are often besieged by offers for free software, free access and freebies. The lure of the freebie is as potent if not more so on the Internet than it is in real life. Downloading such freebies can come with passenger programs designed to record keystrokes and much more.

The least of the problems that spyware can commit is to tie up bandwidth and computer memory. The worst is that it can actually spawn Internet attacks to other sites, download critical data and send it elsewhere. Employees do not have to be lured just by a freebie either. They can simply make a typo in submitting a URL and find themselves in the wrong Internet neighborhood. Clever programmers can generate pop-up windows and disguise a button with a simple label like ‘close’ and the user will click it, thinking they will only close the nuisance window. Some programs on high-speed network access can be downloaded in the blink of an eye, compromising the computer and potentially the network.

One-Click Scandals

Scandals need very little fuel to fire. A user who chooses to go to a website of questionable integrity and intent and a user who is lured there by a bad link or a typo offer the same type of danger to a company. Scandals do not have to make the front page to generate reputation-damaging issues for a company.

Word of mouth is as fast a delivery service for reputation sabotage as press reporting is. A network security company that cannot protect against hacking of their website does not engender trust or confidence. A financial investment firm that is accused of insider trading when emails and instant messages from employees are subpoenaed and found to be questionable will likely lose clients, capital and more.

The Burden of Responsibility

Scandal can be generated by an innocent act as easily as by one of guilty intent. Corporations are responsible for the actions of their employees. Questionable Internet behavior and activity can and will affect a company’s reputation, financial standing and potentially their legal standing as well.

A corporation bears the burden of responsibility for its employees and their actions. By employing network security devices to monitor and restrict Internet activity, a corporation not only relieves a large measure of their burden, but also protects their interests on numerous fronts. Without such protection, a company is courting disaster and inviting scandal.

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The Importance of Context in Content Filtering

Launching a search for “Breast Cancer Awareness” should not result in a flood of pornographic URLs, but if your filtering solution isn’t capable of analyzing context as well as words, that might be what happens. Filtering pornographic texts may focus only on the word “breast” and not on the context in which it is presented. It is important that your company’s Appropriate Use Policy (AUP) includes the specific definition of what constitutes Web sites that need to be blocked. Visiting the Breast Cancer Society’s home page would probably be allowed by most company AUPs. However, making sure that authorized sites get through and inappropriate sites get blocked, can be a very tricky business, especially if your filtering solution looks only at words and not context.

The Hardware Filtering Option

One way to ensure that your AUP is accurately enforced is to implement a hardware filtering solution that is able to handle both words and context. In addition, an appliance offers other advantages that make it the ideal choice to perform complex filtering processes that are fast, accurate and flexible.

One advantage is that an appliance-based filtering solution fits easily into your network’s topology while at the same time giving the company the flexibility of outstanding features. A hardware appliance is a dedicated and features pass by architecture that allows it to remain stable regardless of the load.

If load increases, the hardware appliance is infinitely scalable by simply adding another machine. Software filters are limited in both their performance, scalability and single points of failure.

Comprehensive Reporting

One of the most important components of successful Web filtering for any organization is the ability to generate relevant reports. You can get an instant snapshot of activity at your organization or produce management or compliance reports required by your organization. There is no better way to ensure that accuracy and reliability goals are being met. If you can find an appliance-based Web filtering solution that offers on-box reporting, you found the best product. With total on-box reporting you won’t have to purchase additional hardware or software that drives up your costs. In addition, you will be able to prove that inappropriate content is not reaching your employees and that appropriate content is allowed to get through. Also, reporting allows you to fulfill the requirements of your organization’s Acceptable Use and Security Policies and document your compliance.

The Importance of Human Review

Automatic URL database updates are essential for providing secure and timely content filtering. It is particularly critical that these database updates are vetted by more than just name identification. By employing 100% human-review coupled with weekly, daily or hourly updates, your company is protected from dangerous sites and objectionable content around the clock.. Using human-review, sites with questionable content are reviewed daily and added to the database. Conversely, if a site such as the Breast Cancer Society or a site handling fertility treatment information comes up for review,a human interface can approve the content for the database.

Medical Mistakes and Business Operations

The accurate and secure filtering of Web content has serious implications for many different organizations. In the case of Medical facilities it is important to know that hospitals and doctors’ offices are now governed by the HIPPA policy. This policy requires that no private medical data be distributed to anyone other than those precisely identified by the patient. If the internal or network security of a medical facility should be compromised, that facility would be in violation of HIPPA and subject to serious fines as well as the loss of patient confidence.

Pornography, phishing, spy ware, violent or racist websites may share similar words with valid websites, but they are negative and dangerous to the internal security of a company’s network and to their public reputation. By using an appliance based Web filtering solutions, companies can implement the necessary tools and resources required to protect their best interests no matter what the nature of their business. There are inherent limitations associated with software solutions especially when a firewall is involved. A software solution combined with a firewall means that eventually the general purpose CPU of the firewall will become bogged down with the double duty it will be forced to perform. In the worst-case scenario, the network is slowed down by the software filter and the firewall device, leading to compromised performance and network security.

Cyberspace can be treacherous, but it shouldn’t be frustrating and arbitrary. Software-based solutions that are inherently more complex and which employ heuristics rather than 100% human -review can only do so much. To ensure success, human interface is needed in order to judge context for content. The best solution for network security is a solution that is dedicated to providing the best service possible so that your organization can fulfill its interests and satisfaction.

While the danger of lost intellectual property and high-profile lawsuits float around in cyberspace, a hardware filtering solution keeps the dangers locked out while protecting access to vital content.

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