Over the past 20 years since the inception of the Internet, its day-to-day use in the business world has gone from being a novelty to a necessity. Years ago, many organizations opted to only allow Internet access to those individuals at a management level or higher, but now it has become a necessary avenue for most all individuals within an organization. Opening up the Internet to everyone does come with some additional risks including, lost productivity, legal liability, increased exposure to security threats, and decreased network performance. Web Content Filtering can help organizations mitigate these risks and protect their networks from the additional threats.
Security Threats
Web content filtering creates a layer of protection from malware, phishing, and other online scams ensuring that the content never reaches the end users device. By blocking access at the source of the threat, organizations can avoid the time and money spent on cleaning up such attacks and save on precious Internet bandwidth.
Network Performance
With the increase in Internet usage we are also seeing growing pressure on the broadband connections that support businesses. In areas where the cost of bandwidth is expensive, it can be very costly for an organization to continually increase their connection speeds to support the increased demand. With Web content filtering an organization can ensure that the bandwidth they are consuming is for legitimate business needs.
Productivity
It is estimated that 40% of Internet usage in the workplace is not related to business (IDC). Web content filtering can allow businesses to filter out traffic such as social networking, shopping, personal e-mail, gambling, adult content, peer-to-peer networking, internet radio, and many more. Furthermore, this type of blocking can be controlled all the way down to the user level, allowing some users access while restricting other users.
Legal Liability
Companies of all sizes bear the burden of insuring their organizations from legal threats and liabilities. Courts have determined that the employer is responsible for the web activities of its staff. What seems funny to one group of individuals might be very offensive to others. Through the use of web content filtering, organizations can prevent access to much of this content, decreasing their overall legal liability.
Web content filtering has become a necessity for organizations to protect themselves from the increased number of security threats, as well as, an important resource for maximizing the network resources while controlling communication costs. For more information on our web content filtering solution please contact us, either by phone 800-557-0663 or email [email protected].
