Internet Security Madness Lasts Far Longer Than ... - Business Insider

Although the NCAA?s ?March Madness? is over and a new championship team has reigned supreme, the real winners are business owners, as they are regaining their employees? full attention back to their jobs.

This year?s ?Challenger March Madness Report? predicted March Madness?coverage?could attract more than 2.5 million employees per day, each spending an average of 90 minutes watching games! ? ?This?could result in millions of hours in lost or diminished employee productivity.

Not only does this type of event cause workplace productivity issues, it also opens your business to network performance and serious security risks. While your employees searched online for NCAA news, streamlined live game coverage or downloaded tournament brackets for office pools, cyber crooks were making their moves. By creating fake websites or offering streaming capabilities, Internet thieves can easily place spyware into corporate computers.

Spyware gathers personal information such as online banking information, user accounts & passwords. Spyware can also record information about computer usage, loaded applications, web browsing habits, email exchanges, record every keyboard stroke and more.

For employers, web monitoring software is vital to protecting your corporate computer system?s security.

TopTenReviews.com rated their top 3 web security monitoring softwares:

1. Spytech SpyAgent ($69.95) earned the ?Gold Award.? The monitoring software?s advanced document surveillance capabilities may appeal to business owners who seek to protect their intellectual property from corporate espionage. Spytech SpyAgent prevents users from accessing websites that contain pornography, gambling or other questionable content.
2. WebWatcher ($97.00) is the ?Silver Award? winner. The software creates a list of visited URLs, the frequency, hour and duration of each visit.
3. Spector Pro ($99.95) is the ?Bronze Award? winner. This software?s method of blocking unwanted website content by specific URL is more effective than preventative filtering by keyword or category.

GFI Software created a new software for small & medium-sized businesses called ?The GFI WebMonitor.?

According to David Attard, product manager ? GFI Software, ?While IT administrators may be concerned about employees visiting websites that create security issues or hog bandwidth, other parts of the business are more interested in how web access impacts productivity or potential legal liabilities that may arise from employees visiting and passing on inappropriate content in the workplace.?

However, if? your small business has no budget, there are free web monitoring softwares.? For example, ActivTrak keeps tabs on your employees and what websites they visit.

Despite technology, small business owners can also implement simple procedures to follow:

• TELL YOUR EMPLOYEES THEY?RE BEING MONITORED:? Unless an employee? requires covert monitoring, tell employees what you track & why. A simple statement in your employee handbook telling workers everything they do on company computers can & will be tracked.
• FILTER EMAILS & WEB CONTENT: Most good endpoint-security tools include Web & email content filters. Limiting ways employees get into trouble, prevents some problems from happening.
• CHECK WEB SECURITY MONITORING REPORTS: Take time to identify potential problems early & take action. Small business owners can often fix problems with an email telling employees what is not an appropriate use of company time.?

You can be sure ?March Madness? will return in 2013.

Today, you can make your company?s computers more secure, by taking the right actions right NOW!

Read more posts on Ramon Ray & the Smallbiztechnology.com Team ?

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