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Increased Visits to Porn Sites At Work

With high unemployment rates and the potential of them rising even more, you would think that employees are doing whatever they can to be productive and keep their jobs.  Instead, according to a study by Nielson Online in October 2008, visits to porn sites at work is up 23 percent from the previous year.  This means that almost one quarter of employees are visiting porn sites during the workday.  “Hits to porn sites are highest during office hours than at any other time of day,” according to M.J. McMahon, publisher of AVN Online magazine, which tracks the adult video industry.

Some analysts believe that it has to do with the declining economy and people looking for an escape, while others speculate that it has to do with a younger generation in the workforce that has grown up accepting porn as a part of life.

Regardless, porn surfing at work poses a major legal liability risk for businesses.  This type of activity puts the employer at serious risk of being sued by other workers who are offended or upset by being exposed to pornographic images. Such suits usually take the form of ‘sexual harassment’ or ‘hostile workplace’ litigation and can be very costly in terms of damage to reputation as well as legal costs.  In addition to the legal costs, businesses also have to be concerned about costs due to loss of productivity.

In fact, the Senate Finance Committee is investigating the misuse of NSF computers by government officials to view online pornographic material. In one instance, the report cites an NSF “senior official” who allegedly spent 20 percent of his work hours “viewing sexually explicit” Web sites. This amounts to a potential loss of $58,000 in employee compensation.

According to Salary.com, the average employee wastes 2.09 hours a day on the Internet.  An average administrative employee costs a company $37.84 per hour according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.  For a company with 1,000 employees, this amounts to over $18 million in productivity losses in a year.

A simple and cost-effective way employers can help ensure that employees use the Internet for productive purposes and not visit sites that pose a legal liability threat to the company is to filter and/or monitor Web access.  Wavecrest Computing offers Internet filtering and monitoring products CyBlock and Cyfin, to fit any organization’s needs.  The average cost for a Wavecrest product with a 1000-employee license is $3,500 per year. This is less than two tenths of one percent of the cost of lost productivity, making an Internet filtering or monitoring solution well worth the investment.

Sources:
https://www.newsweek.com/id/171279
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/28/grassley-launches-inquiry-widespread-porn-charges-nsf/

Configuration Backup for CyBlock and Cyfin

Before the end of the year, all of us at Wavecrest would like to wish all of our customers and readers a Happy Holiday and Happy New Year!  We also wanted to leave you with one final product tip for the year.

If you are ever concerned about losing your configuration in your CyBlock or Cyfin product, there is no need to worry.  A backup of the configuration files for your CyBlock or Cyfin product is created on a nightly basis in a folder called ‘restore’.  This backup is stored in daily files for the past 30 days.  Therefore, if you ever lose any configuration for any reason, our technical support team can retrieve this data from you. Simply contact technical support for instructions on sending the proper information, and they will extract the file and send it back to you.

You can contact technical support by phone at 321-953-5351, ext. 4 or by email at support@wavecrest.net.

More Cyber Monday Shopping Expected This Year

Cyber Monday is just around the corner, and this year, almost 84 percent of online retailers are planning Cyber Monday promotions.  Cyber Monday takes place the first Monday after Thanksgiving (December 1), i.e., the first day employees are back to work.  Last year, Americans made hundreds of online purchases and spent $733 million on Cyber Monday.

This year will not be any different, and in fact, more shoppers will probably be looking for online deals on Cyber Monday.  A survey conducted by BIGresearch found that 70 percent of young adults 18-34 with Internet access will shop at work.

Cyber Monday shopping and holiday shopping are huge productivity wasters for businesses.  Wavecrest’s products can help you block online shopping at work.  You can monitor and/or filter Web use with your Cyfin or CyBlock product by category, e.g., shopping, entertainment, sports, etc.  Wavecrest’s CyBlock products also allow you to block Web access by hour so that you can allow employees to access shopping sites on their lunch break or after hours.

U.S. Department of Justice Monitors Web Use with Cyfin Reporter

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently renewed Cyfin Reporter for the seventh consecutive year.  Cyfin Reporter enables the DOJ to conduct up to 100,000 employees’ Web usage simultaneously. The Department continues to use Cyfin Reporter because of its robust performance, accuracy and scalability and the many benefits it provides, i.e., improved productivity and decreases in bandwidth consumption, legal liability and security threats.

It’s important for employers to ensure that their employees are using the Internet in a productive manner and are not accessing sites that hurt productivity or degrade network performance.  Cyfin Reporter helps organizations do this by providing actionable and accurate employee Web-use investigations. Its features include automatic abuse detection, interactive drill-down, and a report scheduler that runs and distributes reports automatically.

Dennis McCabe, Vice President of Business Development at Wavecrest Computing, states, “the great thing about Cyfin Reporter is that it not only allows organizations to monitor ‘bad’ sites, but it also allows them to monitor those sites that employees should be utilizing on a regular basis, e.g., the company’s Web site or intranet.”  This is what makes Cyfin Reporter a truly effective tool for managing Web use.

For 12 years, Wavecrest Computing has been providing Internet filtering and monitoring solutions to business, government, and educational organizations worldwide.  Wavecrest’s customer base includes well-known names such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, Procter and Gamble, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Bridgestone, Mazda and many others.  Government agencies and educational institutions can purchase Wavecrest products through GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule at a substantial discount.

Don’t Forget to Check Your Product News

The Wavecrest Computing product news system was introduced in September 2006 in CyBlock Version 5.5.3 and Cyfin Version 7.5.3.  If you have one of these versions of CyBlock and Cyfin or later, 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 are generally updates or things you need to know about the latest product release.

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.  A Non-critical message is typically a notification that there is a new release or update available for your product.

New Minor Releases: CyBlock 5.9.0 and Cyfin 7.9.0

New versions of Wavecrest Computing’s CyBlock and Cyfin monitoring and filtering software were recently released.  They include the following new features and enhancements.

  • Enhancement – Array configuration. This release contains a useful new feature which will allow you to combine all of your proxy data into an Enterprise report.  It also lets you apply settings and policies from one ‘primary’ installation to multiple ‘secondary’ installations.  For Cyfin Reporter, this feature works a little differently.  Instead, it allows you to use multiple servers’ CPU’s to process logfile data, while leaving one ‘primary’ Cyfin Reporter machine free to run reports.
  • New Report – Site Audit Detail. This report lists all users that visited a particular Web site and shows the total visits.
  • Enhancement – Proxy Chain ability. CyBlock Proxy and Cyfin Proxy now have the ability to use a ‘downstream’ proxy in a ‘chain’ configuration.
  • Enhancement – Job Queue. New keyboard shortcuts allow you to pause and restart the job queue.  Also, all jobs are now numbered in the queue.
  • Enhancement – Logging optional. (CyBlock Proxy only) Logging of proxy data can be disabled without affecting the filtering policies in place.
  • Enhancement – New logfile formats supported. (Cyfin Reporter only) Cyfin Reporter extends support for Sidewinder Firewall G2, IronPort Appliance, Symantec Web Security and MIMEsweeper logfiles.

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.

2008 Summer Olympics: Bandwidth and Productivity Concerns for Businesses

The start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games are right around the corner, and this year, NBC plans to stream 2,200 hours of live events on NBCOlympics.com.  This may cause several network problems and productivity losses for businesses. To give you an idea of how much bandwidth a video can eat up, an episode of “The Simpsons” uses about 25,000 kb.  This can cause major problems when you multiply that by several employees at one time. 

Whether you’re concerned about productivity, bandwidth or both, your CyBlock or Cyfin application can be used to help you filter and/or track Web access the NBC Olympics site. The site https://www.nbcolympics.com is included in the category Sports but can also be filtered or monitored separately by placing it in a custom category if you don’t want to block the entire Sports category.  Or, you can choose to just block video from the Web site by placing the URL https://www.nbcolympics.com/video/index.html in a custom category.  Dont’ forget that you can also use the hourly blocking option if you want to allow employees access to the site during lunch and after hours.

To use custom categories, simply go to Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Edit URLs.  Simply select the custom category you’d like to use, and type in the URL(s) you’d like to filter or monitor.  For Cyfin users and those that decide to just monitor Web use of NBCOlympics.com, you can run a Category Audit Report on the Custom Category that you created to track that site.

Finding System Information for CyBlock or Cyfin

There’s a quick and easy way to get system and configuration information on your CyBlock or Cyfin product.  Just go to Help – System Information – Server Information on your product’s menu, and it will take you to the Server Information screen, which gives you the:

  • License Information
  • Number of Data Configurations (CyBlock ISA and Cyfin Reporter)
  • Install Directory Path
  • Communication Port
  • Memory Usage
  • URL List Configuration
  • Email Configuration


You will also find your various directory configurations on this screen for your Scheduler Directory, Email Reports and more.  This is a great screen to check out to find out how much available memory you have, if the URL list is properly configured, and where your configuration files are located.

Are Some Web Domains More Dangerous Than Others?

The simple answer is “yes.”

A recent report published by McAfee showed that specific country domains and some generic domains are more dangerous than others. The most dangerous country domain is Hong Kong (.hk) with 19.2% of sites posing a security threat to visitors. Second to Hong Kong was China (.cn) with just over 11% of sites found to pose a security threat. The most dangerous generic domain is .info with 11.8% of sites posing a security threat, while government sites (.gov) still remain the safest domains.

The report also revealed that security threats from surfing the Web have increased 41.5% over 2007. So then the question becomes, “how can I protect my Internet users from accessing these sites that are prone to harboring spyware, adware, viruses, etc.?”

There are several steps you can take to help protect your network from a Web-use management perspective.

  1. If you have CyBlock, you can block access to those domains that are the most dangerous by using the wild card option in a custom category. Assuming that access to these domains in your workplace is not needed for the majority of Internet users, then simply blocking the domains is a good way to keep users from accessing them on purpose or on accident. Should a user ever have a need to access a legitimate site with that domain, then it can simply be added to an allow list in either a custom category or one of the other 69 predefined Wavecrest categories that you allow.
  2. If you are using Cyfin, while you can’t block sites with a particular domain, you can still track access to them by using a custom category and running a report against that category to see if there is any activity in those domains.
  3. Also be sure to monitor and/or block the existing Spyware/Malicious, Phishing/Fraud, Public Proxy, and Hacking categories to help protect your network.
  4. Finally, the most important step you can take to ensure that your Internet users are surfing safely is to make them aware of Web security threats and the type of sites that are more likely to harbor them.

New Releases: CyBlock 5.8.7 and Cyfin 7.8.7

I am thrilled to announce that several enhancements were recently made to Wavecrest Computing’s Cyfin and CyBlock products. These include:

New Scalability. The latest versions of CyBlock Proxy and Cyfin Proxy include high-performance scalability. These new scalable multiplexed proxy servers replace the previous thread-based versions, meaning that they can handle large numbers of users and requests. These new versions will:

  • react quicker to new requests
  • minimize resource contention
  • tolerate slow or unresponsive clients and servers more efficiently.

Enhanced Reporting Options. Several enhancements were made to the Web-use reporting features for all products. These include:

  • a new “Last 24 Hours” time frame option
  • the ability to name scheduled reports
  • the ability to enter other email addresses to receive scheduled reports.

Array Configuration. The array feature is now available for blocking policies in the latest version of CyBlock ISA. 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.