Like unrestricted privileges to administrative users in a network (PUMA), uncontrolled web access in companies has its own set of problems. Irresponsible Internet usage tends to reduce employee productivity increases security risks, and the prime bandwidth necessary for business consumption becomes scarce. 

The Social Enterprise

In this era of cloud computing and social media, access to Internet for business usage is the order of the day. Companies make use of social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to stay in touch with their customers, to quickly market their products, to stay informed about best practices, etc. But then, surveys by various agencies indicate that YouTube alone drains 10% of the business bandwidth usage, another 5% by Facebook. There is no dispute that Internet usage has to be streamlined and effectively monitored to ensure that it is responsibly used.

It is a fine balancing act. Take full advantage of the facilities of the Internet and at the same time, prevent over use and avoid security risk. So, what do we do now?

Non-intrusive & Real-time Monitoring

There is a fine line between being Big Brother and keeping employees from misusing corporate Internet access, and this is where an non-intrusive, real-time Internet user activity monitoring solution like ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer comes to your rescue. Firewall Analyzer is a log analytics and configuration management software for network security devices. It monitors corporate bandwidth usage in real-time, tracks web sites visited, provides protocol-wise & application-wise bandwidth consumption.  It captures all network security events and notifies about the security situation. It audits the configuration and security of the perimeter device to assess the security of the device itself.

Customer Voice:

This is what one of our customer had to say about using Firewall Analyzer to monitor employee Internet usage and how they prevent large file downloads 


Monitoring Corporate Users’ Internet Activity using Firewall Analyzer

With Firewall Analyzer you can use any of three following use cases to monitor your employees Internet usage:

  1. Quick Reports from Dashboard
  2. Reports using Advanced Search
  3. User-specific Custom Reports

In our next post we will show you how to monitor corporate users’ Internet activity using Quick Reports from Dashboard.

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