What Principles to Consider when Optimizing Web Security
In order to optimize the organization’s web security strategy, businesses should invest in good web filtering and web monitoring software, complementing the other security solutions they may have.
Web filtering does to your organization what a mosquito net does to your skin – it keeps the bugs away whilst allowing air to pass through. The trick to effective web filtering is to carefully tune the list of websites on the whitelist, and those on the blacklist. A good web filter can do this balancing act automatically and constantly by feeding off information kept on global servers that are monitoring the Internet in real-time, looking for new emerging threats. Most web filters will also allow companies to customize what is on the whitelist and blacklist and will be able to filter out websites based on lists of keywords.
Web filtering will give both the business and its employees several benefits. Employees are prone to click on innocuous-looking malicious websites. These websites inject malicious code into the user’s browser which, in turn, can infect the user’s entire computer – transforming it into anything from a mad spam spewing machine to an infected zombie PC listening for commands from a hacker on the other side of the world. This type of attack is often called a “drive-by download” and affects all browsers on all operating systems, so nobody is safe. Web filtering increases the web security for your organization by blocking any site that delivers malware in this way.
Web filtering is then complemented by web monitoring in two ways. First of all, it keeps track of the websites that actually do make it through the filters. These websites are generally legitimate; however they might still violate the company policy and must therefore be tracked. Secondly, web monitoring involves the analysis of the Internet usage patterns of your users. This will help you identify cyber-slackers, or people who are exchanging too much information with external websites.
By eliminating cyber-slacking, companies benefit from an increase in productivity. These days it is very common that unsupervised employees spend many hours engaged on social networking or gaming sites during work hours. By monitoring Internet usage instead of blocking it, employees can do their jobs without unnecessary restrictions that can be counterproductive. Monitoring allows more freedom and flexibility for an organization and does not need to be intrusive. Good web monitoring software can generate powerful reports allowing you to see a graph of your entire company. In this way you can identify the biggest time-wasters and adjust your web filters to block them.
Web filtering and web monitoring are clearly very important to enforce web security in your company, giving benefit both to the business and to employees.
Just a suggestion to the writer. You should have listed (or at least bolded the fonts)to the principles to consider when optimizing web security. As we all know, most online users don’t actually read the whole article. They just scan the most important points, which can be read and understood quickly if it were all listed / bulleted. You can also make the font bold for emphasis.
You have a nice headline – make use of it. One way to organize your article is through a summary outline. After this, all your points will easily follow. Try it.
Point taken
I will see how I can do this better next time.
A very good article, loved the mosquito net connection – it’s so easy to understand! Bullets or no bullets, this article is a good read and even if you scan rather than read, it is easy to get the essence.
Thanks for the feedback Sarah, I often try to keep my posts concise and straight to the point.
For me, web filtering does more good to businesses than to its employees. It secures companies against online and offline attacks, protects it against malwares, and makes the organizations identity intact and unscratched.
However, when web filtering is applied to employees – it’s another story. For me, it can (most of the time) hinder their sanity at work. Sometimes, we all need to browse “fun” websites to relieve work-related stress.
Anderson, you make a very important observation here. The benefits to the company are obvious, but the hidden caveat is that if web filtering is too restrictive it can (and will) have a negative effect on the employees, and eventually the company.
To overcome this problem, I am a firm believer in what is called “soft blocking”. This allows users to override blocking after warning them that a URL is in breach of company policy and it puts into practice the concept of self-policing.