Content Filtering for Your Employees - Have You Tried It?

Do you have any idea how much time your employees spend on Facebook, March Madness or fantasy baseball websites? If they are doing it on your time, then you should know. A $20 an hour employee lo sing 1 hour per day costs you over a $5,000 a year. Content filtering helps you control that cost.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Content filters can be software only or a combination of software and hardware. The type of content filter will depend on your network and how much reporting you would like. Most content filters have a way that you can block everything or you can allow specific employees to have access.

WHAT CAN YOU BLOCK?

• Content Categories. You can block websites based on a category. Some of the categories that you might want to block would be pornography, violence, hacking, sports, news, dating, bank and chat sites.
• File Type. You can restrict your employees from downloading files. For example, you can block the download of executables or EXE files. This would prevent your employees from accidentally installing a virus or pirated software.
• Instant Messaging (IM). You can block instant messaging such as AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger. These services can cause security vulnerabilities and are often the target of hackers. Blocking public IM communications outright is one strategy to secure information flow and increase network security.
• Application Blocking. You might want to block applications including Internet music applications, software updates, and browser toolbars.
• Allowing Access. Because some people need higher levels of access and functions, you can set filtering by the individual user or a group.

You might want to block all social media sites. This would include LinkedIn. But some of your employees should be using LinkedIn as part of their business networking. If you restricted their use, you would force them to use it from home or worse, from their Blackberry. Using their Blackberry will take 4 times longer and now you are losing time and money. Most filters will allow you to let these specific employees have access to specific websites.

• Warning Policies. You can show employees a custom ‘block page’ but allow them to proceed after being warned. Warning policies are useful for reminding users about sites which may violate corporate Internet usage policy without blocking them outright.
• Web Traffic Monitoring. You can setup the filter for monitoring specific website categories or domain names without presenting block pages to users or preventing access. Monitoring will
  help to make a business decision on what blocking you might want to use.
• Time-based Exceptions. Another common feature is allowing access during specific time periods. You could let all your employees have access to Facebook over their lunch break.
• Spyware and Virus Protection. You can block access to known spyware sites, spyware downloads and detect and block spyware activity.

WHAT DOES IT COST?

Content filters can cost between $500 and $3000 in software/hardware costs the first year. Most content filters have a renewal fee the following years.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

The ROI on content filters is quick. Let’s use this scenario: Your business has 20 employees and on average they each make $42,000 per year or $20 per hour. Let’s say they lose an hour a day to personal internet use.

If you installed a content filter, that would cost you $1000. You just saved your company $104,000 in wasted employee time.

For you mathematicians and bean counters, that is a pretty exciting ROI.

Now you might be one of those skeptics. I can appreciate that point of view. Let’s say you don’t believe that your employees waste one hour a day. You can do your own math. Even at a half hour per day, you have a savings of $52,000 per year.

This is still a huge savings.

For more information and additional features of this new service, visit our website.