Internet can be a benefit to business when used properly, but internet is often abused by employees and poses significant liability and security risks:
- 1. Internet downloading and malicious websites are harmful to your network.
- 2. Online messengers, social networks websites are killing your productivity.
- 3. P2P programs and IPTV applications can easily consume most of your bandwidth.
- 4. Sharing of copyrighted popular music and movies is illegal in most jurisdictions.
Therefore, it is necessary for business administrators to track employees internet usage and restrict internet usage in company networks.
Below I list several aspects to track and filter internet activity on company networks.
1. Keep a record of internet activities.
To track internet usage, you can setup a mirroring port in your switch, and connect an internet monitoring product to this mirroring port to archive all internet activities.
Please check this blog article: How to monitor internet usage on company network?
2. Restrict websites access
- 1. Only work-related websites are allowed during work time.
- 2. Destructive websites like violence, adult, shall be blocked always.
- 3. Downloading websites shall be blocked to save bandwidth if you are suffering from slow internet speed.
For those companies who are very strict with websites browsing, you can implement a website whitelist, by which, only websites in the whitelist can be visited.
3. Block bandwidth consuming protocols
To keep your internet working smoothly, bandwidth consuming protocols like p2p downloading, online streaming shall be blocked during working hours.
Please check:
1. How to monitor internet bandwidth?
2. How to block p2p traffic in your network?