This is an article written by Brian Renter that I found very useful. Like it or not, more Boston area companies get exposed to malware and other viruses than imagined. These problems can slow down your bandwidth speed or even cripple your network. Please let us know if you suspect your company intranet or web access has slowed down because of this activity. You can reach Roan Solutions at 877-774-4647.
Do you know what your employees are doing on the Internet?
By Brian Renter, President, Universal Information Systems
The importance of the Internet to the daily operation of businesses and organizations has increased significantly over the past few years. Most companies have one or more critical business functions that depend entirely on the speed and availability of their Internet connection. Ensuring a reliable and fast Internet connection has become an almost universal priority for companies.
Unfortunately, many new recreational (or non-business) uses of the Internet have been developed that compete directly against a company’s desire for a fast Internet connection. Streaming music or audio, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, on-line banking, fantasy football, among others, consume the bandwidth intended to run critical business applications. Recent studies have shown that even though bandwidth has increased substantially in recent years, actual Internet speed experienced by companies today is more comparable to the Internet speed of five years ago – a time when connections were smaller and slower.
In response to the typical problem “my Internet connection gets slow at certain times of the day,” the usual solution is to add more bandwidth. Expensive lessons are learned, however, when the larger Internet pipe does not solve the problem. This is due to the fact that many of these non-business applications will use all available bandwidth. Business-critical applications are left with the same Internet connection speed as before the upgrade, much to the dismay of management.
In addition to bandwidth issues, distractions caused by non-business uses of the Internet greatly reduce employee productivity. Because of the lack of controls, users can perform personal tasks at will, for extended periods of time, without fear of any repercussion from management. Employees “look busy” without actually performing any real work. The potential for abuse is significant.
Network security may also be compromised with many of these recreational applications. File sharing, a common practice with music downloading, opens up the network to many different types of infections. A significantly high percentage of network virus or malware problems are caused by web traffic.
Organizations walk a tightrope between allowing these recreational uses or locking them out in order to improve Internet performance. The problem most organizations face is that they have no idea of what their employees or users are doing while on the Internet. The first step in solving this problem is to gain visibility into how users are spending their time on the Internet.
Affordable tools have become available over the past few years that allow management the visibility into exactly what activities their users are engaged in while on the Internet. Real time information is available on which sites are being visited, when they were visited, how much time is being spent on each site and exactly what they are doing while there.
Gaining visibility into these activities allows companies to develop controls over what the users can do. These tools give management the ability to limit or eliminate the recreational applications. Many times, for employee morale reasons, eliminating the ability to use these applications is not the goal. Restricting access, either by limiting the bandwidth allocated to these applications or allowing usage only during certain times of day (lunch time, for instance) may be preferred. The “bandwidth shaping” features of the new tools allows for bandwidth or time-of-day restrictions of the recreational applications. This offers management the ability to allow use of these applications but not at the expense of the rest of the operation.
If you are suffering Internet speed issues or employee abuse of the Internet, please contact Roan Solutions at 877-774-4647. We can discuss the options available and see if there is a solution that is right for your organization. Take back control of your Internet connection today!
