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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Top 5 Reasons to Choose An Internet Filtering Appliance Over Software

The need for organizations to monitor and control Internet usage in the workplace should be an accepted fact of doing business in a cyber-connected world. Statistics indicating that 30 to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is unrelated to work issues should come as no surprise. Neither should the report that 90 percent of employee computers harbor as many as 30 spyware programs. In fact, studies indicate that companies may be incurring average costs of $5,000 per year per employee in lost productivity due to Internet abuse. Other data suggest that as much as 72% of employees are downloading music and video clips, eroding bandwidth and leaving networks open to spyware and other malicious agents.

As these dramatic statistics show, the need for organizations to manage their Internet access should be a baseline requirement. But how do organizations choose from the wide range of filters available to them? Perhaps one of the first decisions they will to make is between a software-based filtering solution and dedicated filtering appliance.

Both appliance and software-based options offer standard functionality -- they monitor Internet activity, block site access, automatically enforce corporate Acceptable Usage Policy guidelines and report inappropriate behavior. However, upon closer examination, there are some important and compelling reasons to choose an appliance-based solution.

An overview of the advantages of an appliance over software when it comes to handling your organization’s Internet access include these basic five categories:

• Security
• Stability
• Accuracy & Reliability
• Maintenance
• TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)


Because software-based filtering solutions must integrate with your OS, you cannot be assured that the complexity will not cause security and stability problems. Filters that are software–based can degrade performance because they share resources with their hosts and performance degradation can increase in conjunction with load. It’s hard to scale a software-based filter because more users create increased loads on the host systems. A dedicated Internet filtering appliance uses pass-by technology to check website and IM requests against a list that is updated automatically. If the request matches a name on the list that is not allowed, a denial is sent back to the requester and no bandwidth is utilized.

The dedicated resource of an appliance and its pass-by technology will prevent network slowdowns as well as single-points of failure on the system. The accuracy and reliability of an appliance-based Internet filter is maintained through fluid updates to the system. Software has to ‘check’ every single request, creating a bottleneck that it is a single point of failure. If the bottleneck becomes overwhelmed or crashes, no Internet traffic will be able to pass into or out of the company.

In terms of time and cost, a dedicated Internet filtering appliance requires less maintenance than a software-based filtering system. The database is maintained on the appliance filtering device, where it can be updated automatically with new sites, protocols and even port activities in order to block port-hopping servers. Software filters require manual updates and again, require all traffic to travel through that one single point of failure.

The cost of maintaining both is measured by what each type of service provides. While investing in an Internet filtering appliance may not be feasible for a very small company with only a handful of employees, software based programs are not scaled for handling large loads. The costs of failing software filters are more likely to impact a company’s revenues than the investment in an Internet filtering appliance.

The ultimate task of a Web filter is to filter both incoming and outgoing Internet traffic. The Web filtering solution you choose must be able to protect employees from visiting sites that do not match the Acceptable Usage Policy while also protecting the company from the financial, legal and security ramifications of employee Internet activity. An appliance-based Internet filter protects a company’s assets, reputation, employees and their bandwidth in one package.

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Internet Monitoring, Safety And Security

www.monitoringsoftwareonline.com

Internet monitoring is a necessary part of having internet service. Whether you allow your children to surf the web or if you have the need to monitor employees, effective programs can be used to help you to do this simply. There are many aspects that can be monitored and the results can be delivered to you privately. No one needs to know that you are using internet monitoring technologies either.

There are many options when it comes to internet monitoring. No matter what your need is in these products, you can expect to use high tech gadgets and software. But, they are simplistic to use. Many software programs that monitor internet usage will tell you such things as how long the individual was online as well as what websites they visited, who they chatted with in instant messages, as well as anything that they input into the web. Emails can be tracked as well as a number of other things.

Why should you use internet monitoring? If you are not sure your employees are using their time on the job for job related tasks, this can help you know for sure. If you are unsure of who your spouse is chatting with at night, consider the use of these monitoring solutions. Do you know if someone is stalking your child as they play games on the web? If they use instant message software, find out who they are talking to and what they are saying. Internet monitoring is really a necessary part of keeping people safe and your business under control. Effective internet monitoring software products can be purchased and installed quickly and discreetly. Be in the know.

There are also many information portals now devoted to the subject and we recommend reading about it at one of these. Try googling for “internet monitoring” and you will be surprised by the abundance of information on the subject. Alternatively you may try looking on Yahoo, MSN or even a decent directory site, all are good sources of this information.

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