Comments on: Banning Sites

By: bermuda

bermuda — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 06:13:41 +0000

Hi Wolfeee. Policy is a must but make sure you can enforce it !
We use SurfControl web-filter software which is a little expensive but has an automatic update service eg practically daily indenifying new sites in dozens of categories (which you can change). Also, it’s reporting is good enough to see ‘use patterns’ without being too intrusive eg first half hour of most peoples’ morning seems to get spent on email, some go onto web-News like BBC, this information may be worked into your policy as it develops eg most of our ‘blocking’ is 9am-1pm and 2pm-5pm. If you give people some leeway, they’ll tend to keep to the rules, knowing you can check up on it if they don’t !
What you will need as well is a fairly fast PC with a good NIC which can grab and analyse the IP frames fast enough to make sense of them !
Good luck, it’s a bit of a thankless task because you can never get it quite right and even with a computer’s help it’s not much fun raking through what is for the most part other people’s rubbish – but then you’ve got to preseve the bandwidth for better things and many of these ‘trashy’ sites are so virus/trojan ridden that you’ll probably better protect your systems in the process.

By: johnbf

johnbf — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 05:52:04 +0000

If they’re connecting to the web via a proxy you can ban specific sites / IP addresses there but you’ll need to lock down their ability to bypass the proxy via Group Policies.

By: whitecap

whitecap — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:25:41 +0000

1st step get you AUP in place. Next step inform all staff of the new policy and get them to sign up to it. Last step impliment some sort of filtering. While Websense is a 1st class product it is not cheap. If you are a small/medium size company it may be worth while going for an appliance that will do web proxy and filtering for you. There are some very good ones around. If you want to do it for free use Squid Proxy on Linux with SquidGuard all open source.

By: petroleumman

petroleumman — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:07:10 +0000

Hello,

Having an acceptable use policy in writing is always the first step. But for those that don’t adhere to policy, there are a number of freeware history checkers available on te internet that will do a good job of revealing a users web browsing activities. Nice thing is you can run these without a user even knowing.

On a more permanent note, some type of firewall solution will solve your problem. If budget permits, look into a good hardware solution, otherwise a software version will get the job done too. If your on the cheap, there are tricks that can be applied to your router that will slow down the problem. Router solutions usually require more maintenance and also are easier to bypass, but they do help.

Sounds like you have your work cut out!

Good luck!

By: atomas

atomas — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 08:47:11 +0000

You must get the upper management’s & HR’s support, otherwise don’t waste your time. Then:
* Enforce,
– Electronic Information Exchange Policy
– Use of Information Technology Assets Policy
– Internet Access Policy
– Awareness/Training Program
– etc.
* Track,
* Document,
* Follow-up on events.

By: philb2006

philb2006 — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 07:24:18 +0000

totally agree that you first need to get a policy in place (in conjunction with your HR dept).

By: guardian

guardian — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 06:08:00 +0000

You can try also Nuzzler Intrusion Detection system, you can view all the sites that anyone on the network is browsing without them knowing. And save the history also. But you have to be careful on th IP addresses…

Rgds

By: studley

studley — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 17:30:32 +0000

Websense has software to do the reporting. It will list all the websites by user that are being surfed and for how long. It’s a nice tool.

Regards,

Studley

By: howard2nd

howard2nd — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:21:41 +0000

1st – get Policy – written and approved, with punishments listed.
Then –

Builtin – use cookies in user profile. It is transparent to the user. plain english. easy to sort.

By: drillo

drillo — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:11:15 +0000

There are ways of checking up, but I owld suggest that the first step would be to get management to buy in to an Acceptable Use Policy with consequences and enforce it. If there is no policy, then you will be seen to be the bad guy when you start closing things down. A simple method, albeit time consuming is to check history on the machines when no one is around. Unless you already have a gateway product in service this is probably the easiest option. If you know they are doing it, then they probably don’t cover their tracks all that well. I still think though that a policy is the place to start….if they know they can be fired for it, they may stop on their own

Good luck