You’ve let it go too long, and now it’s out of hand. The network is slow, and everybody complains. Remote users are having trouble utilizing the network effectively. You bought more bandwidth only to find it didn’t really help. You know much of the staff is doing personal tasks on company time.
You need to be more productive to compete in the marketplace and grow the company. What are you going to do and how can you justify another IT expense?
Well, it’s worse that you think. Much worse really. According to Cymphonix “Increased use of social media tools among workers could result in a reduction of operational productivity and cybersecurity strength while also draining valuable bandwidth resources. This fear has led many businesses to pursue internet management and performance tools to ensure that social media connectivity does not sacrifice the functionality of mission-critical tasks.”
Yes, some of that was on YOUR network, and that was YOUR lost productivity.
But Wait! There’s more! This type of behavior also adds a significant amount to risk to your business – malware, trojans, botnets…things that can allow others into your systems to steal valuable corporate data, personal employee data and yes, even money. You can also experience corporate data leakage through instant messaging, unwanted file transfers and more. And threats are on the rise.
Do you know there are more than 70,000 new threats…a day! This is the wild west, and you are in their sights. Why you? Good question. Most of these threats are automated attacks and the bad guys don’t care who’s door they are knocking on…they are just looking for a door they can open.
So now you tell your IT doctor where it hurts:
“I have Internet slowness, and I’m losing productivity to slow-moving apps.
I know my staff is wasting time on Facebook, YouTube, online shopping and its killing the bandwidth.
I could do more with fewer people if I could control the network.
At the end of the day, it’s costing me a pile of money and risking my organization.
Can you help Doc?”
Well, the fact is that you aren’t in control anymore. You need visibility into the network traffic and the ability to control it. Then you can create and implement an acceptable use policy– that really works.
The solution needed is typically a network appliance that will watch and control all network traffic and record it by traffic type, user, time of day, amount of bandwidth and more. You can now see who’s doing what, who’s going where and who’s using the bandwidth. Armed with this information, you can then create and more importantly enforce rules and policies around the acceptable use of the network. These solutions are available from WatchGuard and other firewall providers, CloudJacket, Cymphonix, Clearwidth among others.
We can help you decide which of these is your best fit. Check back soon, I’ll show you how to get it for free.
–Bob Hochmuth
Additional Resources:
Categories: Data Security
blog.slpowers.com 
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