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New Advanced Reporting Options

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New advanced reporting options were recently added to Cyfin and CyBlock. You can configure these options by going to Advanced Settings – Report Settings in your Cyfin or CyBlock product and clicking on the Advanced Options link. The new options include the following:

  • Check For New Logfiles. Before running a report, the product will check for any new logfiles. This option is selected by default.
  • Compress Reports For Email. This compresses the report attachment for read-only reports in an email as a .zip file.
  • Display Login Name and IP Address. Select this option if you want to see both the login name and IP address for each record in the report.
  • Include All Group´s Users. This will display a user ID even if there is no data for that ID in a User Audit Detail or Category Audit Detail report.

If you have any questions about these settings, contact technical support by phone at 321-953-5351, ext. 4 or by email at support@wavecrest.net.

More Businesses Monitoring Employees’ Internet Use

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More businesses are monitoring their employees’ use of the Internet due to a constantly evolving Internet and increased security and productivity concerns.  A recent article, “Big Employer May Be Watching,” from the Tampa Bay Business Journal discusses these concerns in more detail and provides advice from various IT professionals in the field of Employee Internet Management.  Below is a snippet of the article with advice from Wavecrest Computing’s VP of Business Development, Dennis McCabe.

The reasons why companies monitor employees has changed over time, said Dennis McCabe, VP of business development at Wavecrest Computing Inc., a developer of management software based in Melbourne.

After the burst of the dot-com bubble companies grew increasingly concerned with productivity. The concern later shifted to security issues posed by unwanted e-mail or “spam.” Productivity is once again a concern with the economic downturn, as well as security within a company, he said.

“This is not a firewall where you might have unknown hackers that might attack you. These are people working in your building, colleagues,” McCabe said.

Communication between management and staff is essential.

“You need informed management about how employees are using it and based on companies’ philosophy,” McCabe said. “They need to formulate a policy based on that.”

Online Video Viewing is Up

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According to Nielsen’s “VideoCensus,” online video viewing is up this year compared to last.  Total video streaming was up 31.4%, and viewers spent an average of about 3.5 hours watching online video in July.  This is an increase of 42.2% from 2008.  The most popular video Web site was YouTube with over 7 billion streams in July 2009. A simple 5 minute video on YouTube uses 12,500 kilobytes in bandwidth.

Online video viewing often happens in the workplace where users have access to a faster Internet connection.  This can cause network slowdowns or latency in the workplace if abused.

The below Cyfin and CyBlock reports can be used to track bandwidth usage by users and identify potentially troublesome sites.  These reports can help you anticipate overload possibilities and the need (or lack of need) to purchase additional capacity.  If abuse can be detected and brought under control, the cost of additional capacity may be avoided.

  • Site Analysis Bandwidth Report – Focusing on kilobytes by classification, category, and users, this report gives a good overview of whether the majority of bandwidth consumption was acceptable and which categories and users used the most bandwidth.
  • Top Bandwidth Sites Report – This report shows the top bandwidth consuming sites and their categories for the specified time period.
  • Network Information Report – Find out your busiest time of day for Internet use with this report.  It shows visits and kilobytes read by hour.

Source: https://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007247

Categorization Update for YouTube

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YouTube(www.youtube.com) has been moved to the Streaming Media category. It was previously categorized as Social Networking. This change will take effect in today’s URL list download in your Cyfin or CyBlock product.

You can change how sites are categorized by going to the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Edit URLs screen.  Simply use the pulldown to select a category that you wish to assign a site (or sites) to.  Then enter it in the text box, and click Submit.  From then on, the site will be categorized as being in the category you just assigned it to.  You can confirm this by going to the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Check URL screen and typing in the same site you just re-categorized.

In addition to this ability, you have Custom Categories, which are empty and available for you to use.  These categories can be populated with sites of your choosing, and you can even rename the custom categories on the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Name Custom screen.  With these tools at your disposal, you can customize the product to truly suit your unique environment.

Filter Pornography Video in Bing with CyBlock

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Pornography videos in Bing can now easily be blocked with your CyBlock Proxy or CyBlock ISA product.  The explicit URLs allowing access to these videos have been added to the latest Wavecrest URL list download.  If you do not have your product set up to automatically download the URL list daily, you can manually download the latest list update by going to Administration – URL List – Manual.

To block pornography in Bing, simply make sure the Pornography category is set to “Block” on the Advanced Settings – Filter Settings – Block Web Categories screen for your users, and they will no longer be able to view porn in the video search results.

New Releases: CyBlock 5.9.3 and Cyfin 7.9.3

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Wavecrest Computing recently released new versions of its CyBlock and Cyfin products. Some enhancements included are:

  • Enhancement – Arrays. More synchronization functionality has been added. Synchronization automatically takes place now when adding a new member (secondary machine) to an array. Also, using the synchronization button sends configuration parameters from the primary machine to all secondary machines. Note: This feature is not available for the CyBlock Appliance.
  • Enhancement – Backups. Product configuration data is now backed up daily and stored in compressed files. The ability to restore the product to any of your daily backups is now available at the Administration – Restore screen. Note: This feature is not available for arrays.
  • Correction – Screen name change. The screen Advanced Settings – Report Settings – Advanced Options replaces the screen that was initially named Advanced Settings – Report Settings – Preferences.

For full release notes on the products, please visit the forum at https://forum.wavecrest.net/index.php. Current customers can download the latest release from their product by going to the Administration – Product Update screen.

Product Updates: CyBlock Proxy 5.9.2.e and Cyfin Proxy 7.9.2.e

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We recently discovered an issue with accessing SSL (https sites) in CyBlock Proxy 5.9.2 and Cyfin Proxy 7.9.2 versions.  To avoid any problems, we recommend upgrading to the new maintenance versions CyBlock Proxy 5.9.2.e and Cyfin Proxy 7.9.2.e.  To upgrade to the latest version, login to your Cyfin Proxy or CyBlock Proxy product, go to Administration – Product Update and click Download Now.  You can also access the latest version from the support customer login pages on our Web site.

CyBlock Proxy: https://www.wavecrest.net/support/cyblock/sa/downloads.html

Cyfin Proxy: https://www.wavecrest.net/support/cyfin/sa/downloads.html

Wavecrest Now Using Twitter to Keep You Updated

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We recently created a Twitter account to help keep you updated on product and industry developments.  Tweets include updates on CyBlock and Cyfin’s latest product releases, technical and usage tips, and company and industry news on Internet usage issues that affect businesses and schools.  This includes Internet-related news that addresses current bandwidth concerns, productivity losses, legal liability and security threats.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WavecrestNet.

Concerned About Bandwidth Usage During March Madness?

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Bandwidth is a main concern for many businesses during this March Madness season.  Many must deal with employees using company resources to enter online office pools, blog about the top seeds, and watch live streaming games that take place throughout March and early April.

In fact, CBSsports.com is expecting even more viewers online this year. They expect the number of unique viewers for March Madness on Demand, to rise 50% to 7.2 million viewers.  With the massive number of sports Web sites and streaming games available, companies can expect to see a considerable drain on employee productivity and network bandwidth during the NCAA Tournament.

While you may or may not allow your employees to follow the games at work, you will want to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with your network.  Wavecrest Computing offers Internet filtering by category or site, white list filtering, real-time web monitoring and detailed Web-use reports on a particular category or site and bandwidth usage.  Some reports you can use to monitor bandwidth or access to sports sites are:

  • Site Analysis Bandwidth Report
  • Network Information Report
  • Category Audit Detail Report
  • Category Audit Summary Report
  • Site Audit Detail Report

Source: https://www.marketingshift.com/2009/3/cbs-expects-7-millon-online.cfm

New Releases: CyBlock 5.9.2 and Cyfin 7.9.2

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New versions of Wavecrest Computing’s CyBlock and Cyfin Internet filtering and monitoring software were recently released. Below is a list of some of the enhancements included in these versions.

  • Enhancement – Groups and IDs. Subgrouping up to 10 levels is supported.
  • Enhancement – Run Now. You can now run any scheduled report immediately. Simply go to the Reports – Schedule – Run Now screen and click on the report you want to run. The report will be delivered using the scheduled report settings you previously configured.
  • Enhancement – Array. The communication between computers in a Wavecrest product array has been enhanced to do authentication automatically. This prevents communication from halting when a “secondary” machine responds to a “primary” machine with an authentication request.
  • Enhancement – Safe Search (CyBlock ISA Only). The Google and Yahoo Safe Search is now fully implemented with this release. Go to the Setup – Filtering screen to enable this feature.

For full release notes on the products, please visit the forum at https://forum.wavecrest.net/index.php. Current customers can download the latest release from their product by going to the Administration – Product Update screen.