Monthly Archives: March 2010

New Categories Coming April 3!

New categories and category changes will automatically be updated in your product on April 3, 2010 for CyBlock Versions 6.0.0 and later or Cyfin Versions 8.0.0 and later.  If you do not have these versions of the product, you will need to upgrade to the most current version in order to get the new categories and category changes.

For CyBlock, these categories will be allowed by default. Therefore, you will need to go to your Advanced Settings – Filter Settings – Block Web Categories screen and alter your policies.  For reporting and monitoring purposes, you may also want to change the new category’s classification statuses at the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Classification screen to match your organization’s Acceptable Use Policy.

See the Category Update Data Sheet for a full list of categories and their descriptions.

Check Your Product News to Get the Latest Updates

You may notice that the icon below occasionally shows up in the right-hand corner of the browser interface indicating that you have new product news.

This icon will stay in the upper right-hand corner of the browser interface until you click on it to read your product news.

We send product news to let you know general and critical information about your product.  Product news items provide you with information on new releases, category changes, updates and more so be sure to check your news when the icon appears.

When viewing a news item, you will notice at the top that we indicate whether or not the news is critical or non-critical.  Critical news is identified with a red bar, meaning that it is very important that you read the message and may require some action, while non-critical news is identified with a green bar.

March Madness, Again

It’s baaaacccccckkkkkk! Happens every year. March Madness, that is. Everybody loves it. (Well, almost everybody.)

The excitement! The fun! The astounding fast breaks, slam dunks and three-pointers! And oh yes, watching it all unfold on your office computer.

Who could not like it? Well, for openers, the overworked folks who have to worry about workforce productivity, bandwidth costs, security issues and legal risks.

Here’s just one of many worrisome predictions, “FIRST WEEK OF TOURNEY COULD COST $1.8 BILLION.” It comes from the Challenger March Madness Report. The report also states, “The men’s college basketball tournament, better known as March Madness, marks the arrival of several other annual rituals: employee-organized office pools, a potential dip in productivity and a marked decline in Internet speed, as workers soak up bandwidth watching live streaming broadcasts of the tournament games during office hours.”

Not exactly good news for businesses and government agencies during this time of troublesome economic conditions and serious budget worries.

Maybe it’s time to revisit your AUP and rebrief your workers on the negative impact their fun could have on the organization and ultimately on their own job security. And if your organization doesn’t already have a robust Internet usage management solution in place, it may just be time to look into it seriously.

Wavecrest’s Control List includes CBSSports.com and NCAA.com under the Sports category, and for those using Cyfin, access to these sites will be monitored under Sports. If you want to only block and/or monitor the live video, you can create a custom category to block and/or monitor www.ncaasports.com/mmod/player.

How Much Personal Internet Surfing in the Workplace is Too Much?

It depends on what your organization considers “acceptable.” Research shows that the average person spends around one hour per day on non-work related internet surfing.   It also shows that the majority of viruses enter via Internet surfing.

Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products are configurable to fit your organization’s acceptable use policy. You can set acceptability ratings and visit thresholds to each category.  To set acceptability ratings, go to the Advanced Settings – Category Settings – Classification screen in your product.

With CyBlock you can select to “block” or “allow” each category and configure blocking by hour on the Advanced Settings – Filter Settings – Block Web Categories screen.  You can also configure real-time filtering with our deep packet analysis for content types and file extensions on the Advanced Settings – Filter Settings – Block Web Content screen in your CyBlock product.

Read more about personal surfing in the workplace on Business Blogs.

New CyBlock and Cyfin Upgrades

Check out the latest releases for CyBlock Proxy, CyBlock Appliance, Cyfin Reporter, and Cyfin Proxy!  These are packed with tons of great new features that we’re sure you will love.  The new features include:

  • A New Browser Interface with new colors and wider screens.
  • A Dashboard that includes:
    • A Home screen that provides an overview of the organization’s Web use for the last 7 days by displaying charts of Web-use visits, top users, top categories and bandwidth usage.
    • Top charts and trend charts with customizable parameters to view Web usage data by hits, visits or bytes, select the timeframe and compare users Web usage to the group average or enterprise average.
  • More Custom Categories.
  • Enhanced Data Warehousing that includes support for MySQL and SQL server.
  • Full 64-bit support on Windows and Linux systems.
  • Safe Search option to enforce safe search on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Use the following links to access the full release notes for your Wavecrest product.

If you have any questions about any of the new features or upgrading, please contact Support.

Email: support@wavecrest.net
Phone (Toll-free): 877-442-9346, ext. 4 (U.S. and Canada)
Phone (Direct): 321-953-535, ext. 4