Business

The Common Pains and Our Solutions

Many owners and managers think employee web surfing is a small issue, and thus think content filtering is unnecessary: even a bit harsh. If you knew that there was a process problem or inefficiency in your company that was costing you thousands of dollars every year, we are sure you’d jump to fix it immediately.

Choosing not to filter your web content is doing the exact same thing to your company: creating thousands of dollars in wasted productivity per year. Schools began using content filtering software a long time ago: they like Netsentron’s unique combination of a true intelligent content filtering and traditional ‘Ban List’. This combination makes NetSentron extremely effective at protecting students from inappropriate website content, or, stopping users from accessing the wrong things on the Internet. Is this not what your employees should be doing during work hours?

Without a content filter, you are letting your employees waste productive hours surfing the Internet for things entirely unrelated to their work tasks. Some quick research yields the following:

  • 30 – 40% of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business (IDC Research)
  • Over 60% of all online purchases are made between 9AM and 5PM  (Nielsens/NetRatings)
  • 70% of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9-5 workday (SexTracker)
  • 37% of workers say they surf the Web constantly while at work (Vault.com)

These independent statistics clearly show that employees are spending a large amount of time looking at things on the Internet that they should not be.

4 Great Reasons that Your Company Needs a Content Filter

#1 | Recovers Productive Worktime

Let’s say that you have three employees, who each earn $20 per hour and work a 40-hour week with two weeks of yearly vacation. Let’s assume that, with True website content filtering in place, you recover just 15 minutes of productive time a day from each employee. This is much less than the 30-40% of Internet use that employees admit is unrelated to their work tasks. Though it does not sound like much, you have just recovered $300 in labour costs per month, never mind the recovered income from increased employee productivity! Thus, by recovering less than 1% of employee productive time, you have saved $3,600 in a year.

Now let’s try that scenario again with more realistic numbers – assume each of your employees spend 20% of their days surfing the internet and that by using content filtering, you could recover 75% of this unproductive time – a very conservative estimate compared to 30-40% wasted time. In the same scenario, you have just saved $18,000 per year! Even after the purchase of NetSentron, you have saved $16,400 in the first year, and $17,400 every year after. Imagine what your business could do with that much extra cash!

#2 | Limit Legal Liability

It might be hard to believe that the most common form of employee Internet misuse is to surf pornography and other inappropriate adult content. Did you know a co-worker overseeing this misuse could result in legal action against your company? It is not difficult to imagine the costs of such a lawsuit.

NetSentron allows you, as the system administrator, to set custom filtering parameters and thresholds to protect your employees, and your company, from the financial repercussions of such lawsuits. Check out our full feature list here to find out how else NetSentron can protect your company.

#3 | Improve Network Performance

Many of us have a limited understanding of how data flows to and from our computer networks. So when we see our computer applications slowing down, most of us get frustrated, assuming that our expensive IT infrastructure is old and needing replacement. Luckily, this is quite likely incorrect – the culprit is likely mismanaged bandwidth usage, which comes at a significantly lower cost to fix.

“Almost 40% of enterprise network bandwidth is being consumed by recreational or non-business applications” – Blue Coat Systems Survey

Some employees download intensive content like music videos, streaming media and advertising banners that clog up network resources, creating a slow network connection across your entire business. With Netsentron’s diagnostic tools, you can quickly and easily identify where your bandwidth is being used excessively. This tool allows you to identify the computer downloading the media clogging up your bandwidth and stop the overuse by throttling the bandwidth, just like you use the throttle on your car to speed up or slow down! You can even set a bandwidth limit for each individual computer, to keep your network resources free for important work.

#4 | Hacker Protection

Every day, more and more companies are moving their businesses online. Whether to realize cost savings, increased flexibility, or simply reach their customers more effectively, companies are inadvertently leaving their networks open to an intruder. With the ever-changing Internet and security threats, it is more important now than ever to have security protocols in place.

“Research shows that the top security implementation initiative for the next two years should be intrusion detection.” – Gartner

NetSentron’s security server, nominated for the Best Intrusion Detection System by CMP Network Magazine, is designed to protect your company’s network from external attacks without interfering with your staff’s access to the Internet’s resources. With an easy-to-use Intrusion Detection reporting system, you can see where and when someone has tried to hack into your company’s network. NetSentron also allows the ability to detect, prevent and monitor internal intrusions.