As an outsource security partner BAI provides managed security, managed firewall, managed ids, content filtering, internet security, network security, penetration testing, and vulnerability testing.

Internet Access for web surfing and email communication at work is critical to accessing massive amounts of information resources, business applications, researching new customers, managing existing customer relationships, and building closer ties with business partners just to name a few.  Access to all this information on the web can make employees more productive and effective.  Unfortunately, it can also lead to issues of Employee Productivity, Network Performance, Security and Legal Liability when employees have unmanaged access to the Internet. 

What are the risks?

Employee Productivity.  Wasting otherwise productive time by surfing personal websites in the workplace.  Inappropriate use of Internet resources while at work is believed to cost businesses more than $55 billion every year.

Network Performance.  Bandwidth intensive activities such as streaming audio and video, MP3 and image downloads can have a significant impact on network performance and impedes business traffic.

Security.  Exposing the company to the risk and cost of accidentally leaking sensitive confidential company information by email without taking the proper precautions.  Exposing the company to the risk of viruses by downloading the types of files and images that are often used to hide viruses.

Legal.  Exposing the company to the significant risk and cost of legal liability that can result if employees are allowed to use internal email to exchange offensive material such as porn, racist, or hate literature, or copyrighted materials such as MP3s.

Publicity.  Several companies have been forced to dismiss people found guilty of accessing illegal or offensive material.  The publicity can be very damaging.

There is a solution: Web and Email Filtering Technology.

Web Filtering helps employers to manage what Websites their employees visit by blocking access to prohibited Websites, or blocking access to certain sites at certain times.  Web Filtering solutions allow employers to choose predefined categories of websites that have been deemed inappropriate for work access and can easily re-categorize any site or add an entirely new category and site in the rule set.

Email Filtering is used to monitor where emails are coming from, and whether or not they contain inappropriate content, such as pornographic, racist, or hate literature.   A rule set is used to make a decision whether the email is allowed, deleted, isolated for further inspection or delayed for later delivery.  Another important component of email filtering solutions is an Anti-Spam control which analyzes email headers for the unique characteristics of this junk mail and tosses them out of the company email system.  This feature alone can save companies the cost of purchasing an email filtering solution.

Both solutions are designed to enforce the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) on employee use of email and web resources.  The Acceptable Use Policy now has a tool that monitors and reports on how web and email resources are being used, whether the rules are being obeyed, and how usage is affecting network resources, bandwidth use and network traffic.

Since both web surfing and email communication have become the most popular way of communicating in the workplace, employers must find a better way to make sure that these resources are used in an appropriate and correct manner to avoid security and legal risk.