Employee Internet Monitoring & Web Filtering Software Solutions

The Web is only one aspect of the Internet and so Web Filtering is only one aspect of managing employee Internet access. A complete employee Internet control solution will also include in depth Internet monitoring capabilities. Not only should you be able to prevent access to certain categories of Web sites, you should be able to discern habits regarding employee email use, chat, IM, newsgroup postings and file transfers. For those that are concerned with security compliance and identity theft, Internet monitoring software is more appropriate. Compliance and Security Officers are more concerned with leaked information rather than inbound communications being blocked.

Internet monitoring software allows your employees to send files or e-mail, for example, and then captures data from these transmissions to provide reports of Internet usage activity. A complete employee Internet access monitoring solution will allow you to recover the text of these e-communications and set audit flags that are triggered when certain risk criteria are met. In depth Internet monitoring solutions will not only monitor the content of e-mail but will also audit and control the real time communications of e-mail attachments like word documents and spread sheets. Suppose you are concerned with the potential leak of financial data from someone in your accounting department. It is not sufficient to monitor only the content of an email message body for potential infractions while ignoring the spreadsheet that is attached to the email.

In addition to email monitoring and filtering, robust employee Internet usage solutions will provide chat monitoring and IM monitoring. The Internet monitoring solution should be able to recreate the content of the chat session as well as let you create filtering rules to block inappropriate content transmission as well as define acceptable “buddy” lists.