Internet Control for families and children
Whilst the Internet can be hugely beneficial to any family users, both for adults and children, there is also the opportunity for it to become distractive, over-consuming as well as risky. For children, a common use of control is to block inappropriate content, such as web sites with sexual, violent or other adult-oriented content in schools or anywhere else that children might use the Internet. That's the inappropriate content, but even age-appropriate content can be undesirable. Facebook might be great for your teens, and CBeebies for your younger children, but not if they are supposed to be doing something else.
Many parents want to control access to the Internet, for example allowing access to acceptable web sites for specified times of day only. For your adult users in the home, you may want to block access to sites which have a high probability of being infected with malware. You may also wish to block your own computers from sending emails in case of trojan/zombie infection. There are infinite combinations of content filtering and firewalling you might want to impose in your home.
Staff Internet Abuse - A real cost to your business
The Internet provides your business with an effective, useful and often essential facility. Your staff can use it to find quick answers, liaise with customers, send and receive emails and many other productive tasks. Unfortunately, the Internet also provides the opportunity for mis-use. DrayTek products can help you restrict, control and monitor staff Internet usage.
Staff using your Internet facility for time-wasteful activities are costing you. Even more importantly these activities can put your businesses computers and network at risk. A recent survey of 10,000 employees indicated that 44% admitted to spending time on the Internet for personal use, for up to 2.1 hours per day.
Most staff are responsible and prudent with their Internet use and we always recommend a suitable AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) to be in place so that staff or any users of your systems know what they are and aren't permitted to use the computers for. This AUP can be re-inforced by DrayTek routers which can block specific content (either at certain times only or all times) and also block potentially harmful file/code types from being installed by rogue web sites. There are some staff who will make severe abuse of the Internet facilities - spending literally hours on personal matters or social networking sites.
Top 5 Personal Internet Uses for Employees
- Personal Email: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc.
- Intant Messaging: Skype, AOL, Yahoo etc.
- Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Buying: Using Amazon, Ebay etc.
- Multimedia : YouTube, iPlayer etc.
It's easy to let a 'quick visit' become a prolonged stay without realising and losing track of time. All of the above activities can be immensely time consuming and addictive.
What doesn't quite make the list but could be even more serious in its consequences is adult or illegal material being accessed in the workplace, as well as the higher likelihood that such sites are infected with malware which will then get onto your business network. There is also the potential to 'innocently' download software and install it on local PCs, unwittingly introducing spyware or trojans onto your network.