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Into the Madness of March…brackets, bandwidth, malware, and all.

BracketMarch Madness begins on March 17th this year. We all know that employees check out highlights or even stream a whole game. According to Turner Sports’ Will Funk’s interview with AdWeek,Turner did 70 million live streams on broadband and mobile during March Madness 2014. That is a lot of streaming. With all the streaming and new apps that are out since last year, 2015 will likely set another record.

This year, have the choice to allow your employees some freedom to watch and enjoy! CyBlock Web Security Solutions will help protect your business, blocking sites known for malware and proactively controlling bandwidth consumption, while allowing responsible viewing.

With Wavecrest’s Bandwidth Management in CyBlock, there are numerous ways to be able to control access when you need to. With Real-Time Data Usage Monitoring, you will be able to easily view current data usage for the entire enterprise, detect unexpected spikes that could indicate excessive data use, or just observe the last 5, 10, or 15 minutes of real-time updates.

You can also make sure the critical business operations remain functioning efficiently, even during the games, by using the Bandwidth Throttling features. Be more restrictive as the noncritical usage gets higher by setting one of the automatically triggered, higher-usage policy thresholds to throttle more or even block. E-mail alerts will keep you informed wherever you are. Once a policy is activated, policy-specific traffic is throttled or blocked, allowing business-critical applications (VoIP, CRM, etc.) to continue operating as needed.

Don’t forget about protecting your company from malware. March Madness search results have had a history of being known for malware in past years, and this year will likely be no different. As your employees search for brackets or results, CyBlock blocks traffic to the constantly growing number of sites that generate and/or promote malware. Keep out viruses, Trojan horses, phishing attacks, and more.

March Madness has become a way of life. Decide how your company will handle the traffic and proactively prepare for it by letting CyBlock help protect and secure your business and your employees. Find out more about all the Web Security product lines at Wavecrest Computing.

 

Keep employees productive and secure while working from mobile devices.

Many times mobile devices are the primary, or only, organizational interface for an employee. With this evolving mobile business environment, it has become critical to protect both the company and the employee. With CyBlock Mobile Security Browser App v2.0, a companion to the easy-to-implement CyBlock Cloud Web Security Solution, you will enable your employees to work efficiently and securely while accessing the Internet on their mobile devices. Easily enforce your company’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) on iOS devices by defining one or more Web-use policies to successfully address Web security threats, Internet abuse, legal liability, and workforce productivity.

CyBlock Mobile Security Browser App’s Version 2.0 adds many exciting enhancements, such as support for iPhone 6/6 Plus, customizable Web blocking messages, and connection status alerts. Easily enforce your company’s AUP on iOS devices. Learn more about Wavecrest products: https://www.wavecrest.net/

CyBlock Mobile Security App Block Message

CyBlock Mobile Security App Block Message

 

 

Keep Mission-Critical Applications Running Smoothly

bandwdithKeep mission-critical applications running smoothly with Bandwidth Management in CyBlock Cloud, including Wavecrest’s exclusive Web content category level throttling or blocking capability.

Even with corporate Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), the majority of an organization’s Web traffic is often operating unchecked, opening the entire network up to bandwidth hogs, productivity-draining activity, and security risks. With Bandwidth Management in CyBlock Cloud, easily create user-defined policies and configure multiple-usage thresholds to dynamically trigger caps.

As a business that understands the necessity, or just desirability, of employees’ access to the Internet, do you worry about when there is too much nonessential Web activity? Maybe Facebook or Pandora is clogging your bandwidth? Wavecrest has the solution that can help specifically target and throttle Web content category-based traffic, such as social networking or audio streaming. With Bandwidth Management in CyBlock, gain the ability to allow access, but be more restrictive as the usage gets higher by setting one of your higher usage thresholds to throttle more or completely block nonessential categories or user groups.  Set e-mail alerts to keep you informed wherever you are, knowing that your defined policies are automatically triggered and proactively taking care of the issue. Once a policy is activated, policy-specific traffic is throttled or blocked, allowing business-critical applications (VoIP, CRM, etc.) to continue operating as needed.

Now including Bandwidth Management, CyBlock Cloud provides comprehensive Web controls, threat protection, reporting, simplified management, and more — all in a deployment requiring no hardware or software to buy and install, and no maintenance.

 

Wavecrest has a solution for virtually every configuration. Learn more:https://www.wavecrest.net/

 

Site Audit Summary

Finding that Pandora or ESPN tend to show up consistently in your employee Internet access reports? Which specific employees are using these sites the most? With Wavecrest Computing’s Site Audit Summary Report, we provide you with the flexibility to see who the most active users are, giving you another tool to quickly access the information you need. Now available in our CyBlock Software, CyBlock Cloud, and Cyfin products, the Site Audit Summary Report lists the users with the highest volume of activity when visiting a particular site. This report can be run to summarize more than one site and shows the total number of visits made by the user, hourly total visits, and hourly total kilobytes read. This information can be used for such purposes as setting a bandwidth or filtering policy (CyBlock), revising your AUP, or personnel appraisals.

Wavecrest has a solution for virtually every configuration. Learn more: https://www.wavecrest.net/

SiteAuditSummary

 

Cyber Monday is Quickly Approaching is Your Network Ready?

cyber-monday-2013

Cyber Monday crushed it, again.

Online shopping on Cyber Monday hit $2.29 billion in sales in 2013

  • Adobe reported that Cyber Monday eCommerce sales grew 16% year-over-year to $2.29 billion.
  • Adobe also said that 18.3% of sales came from mobile devices, an increase of 80% year-over-year.
  • ComScore reported that Cyber Monday reached $1.73 billion in desktop online spending, up 18% from 2012.
  • IBM said Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in history, with a 20.6% increase in online sales.
ThanksgivingWeekendByHour

The chart above shows Cyber Monday sales dramatically increasing around 9 am on Monday and holding steady throughout the entire work day.

With more and more of your employees doing their shopping online, it has become a cyber security issue for businesses making sure their networks are secure, managing bandwidth and protecting their employee from identity theft . CyBlock Web Security products will help you manage all of this from an easy to use single console.

CyBlock is a complete Web management and security product:

  • Advanced Web Filtering
  • Threat Protection
  • Bandwidth Management
  • SSL Inspection
  • Comprehensive Reporting

More information about CyBlock Web Security Products.

 

Wavecrest Computing Releases Hybrid Option for CyBlock

Melbourne, FL November 12, 2014

Wavecrest Computing, the makers of CyBlock, have just announced the availability of the Hybrid option for CyBlock.

For organizations that are composed of a main office, branch offices, and remote and mobile users, there is a certain need to safeguard all networks and employees in the organization. Organizations want to apply the same Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which is being enforced for on-premises employees, to remote employees. Along with an on-premises installation of CyBlock Software or CyBlock Appliance, companies can also secure remote offices and mobile users using a Hybrid deployment of CyBlock.

“The Hybrid deployment is a feature that uses CyBlock Cloud to extend Web filtering and monitoring to our clients’ off-premises employees, that is, those connecting to the Internet from hotels, airports, home offices, or remote offices.” Dennis McCabe CEO, Wavecrest Computing

CyBlock Hybrid offers a flexible Web security solution that combines your on-premises CyBlock installation with a CyBlock Cloud service. You can manage the policies for your on-premises and off-premises employees from a single interface. Using CyBlock Cloud, the Hybrid deployment secures remote and mobile users so there is no need to route traffic back to the main office. You can free up local server bandwidth and be assured that Web filtering for these users is occurring in the cloud.

CyBlock Hybrid Cloud

Wavecrest Computing has been the recognized leader in Web security and Web-usage forensic solutions for over 17 years. Our scalable filtering and forensic reporting analysis products are designed to enable organizations to successfully address Internet abuse, legal liability, workforce productivity, and Web security threats. Wavecrest Computing’s client list includes well-known corporations such as Edward Jones, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Blue Cross Blue Shield, MillerCoors, Rolex, Siemens, and others.

CyBlock MSP Partner Portal

The CyBlock MSP Partner Portal allows you to easily access and manage all of your customer accounts and view their licenses. Here are the highlights:

  • Once your CyBlock Cloud account has been established, you will receive an e-mail notification to complete your registration by logging on to the interface.
  • In the interface, you will see a list of all your customers and their account information. By clicking the customer name, you can view more information for each customer, such as license details, proxy activity, and reporting storage options.
  • For each of your customers, you can set the product to be specific to their needs including blocking policies, authentication rules, Groups and IDs, and custom categories. You can also run different kinds of reports on employee Web use for your customers, such as audit detail reports.
  • You easily switch between customers and retrieve their corresponding policies, settings, and screens via the Customer menu.
  • You will receive an e-mail notification of the daily status of your customers including proxy and reporting usage. You will also be notified when the number of licensed users has been exceeded for a particular customer.

MSP

 

To learn more about CyBlock’s new MSP Partner Portal read our new Tech Brief.

Filtering and Identifying Web Activity by User Name

Identifying Web Activity by User Name

When a company implements Web filtering and monitoring software, it typically wants to filter and monitor the Web traffic flowing through its network by user name versus IP address for various reasons. Some of these reasons include curtailing casual surfing, protecting against security threats, and conserving bandwidth. Furthermore, a company’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is usually based on user names and/or groups of user names. Therefore, the application that enforces and monitors the company’s AUP needs to identify Web activity by user name. IP addresses can be dynamic, and sometimes more than one employee can log on to a computer, and hence, more than one user name will be using the same IP address.

Many an IT administrator is tasked with ensuring that the company’s employees are going through
the proxy that is in place, so that Web activity can be monitored by user name. To get user names
and authenticate users, IT administrators can choose any of the proxy configuration options and
authentication methods described below.

Depending on the company’s preference, one proxy configuration option may be more favorable than the other. Here, we will discuss applying browser settings manually, pushing out group policies using Active Directory (AD), using a captive portal, and installing client software. We will also touch on the different ways that you can authenticate your Internet users using our CyBlock products.

Read more.

World Cup 2014 is kicking off. Is your network ready?

fifa-world-cup-2014-brazil-logoThe 2014 FIFA World Cup games begin today and will run until July 13. Since the broadcast of the last World Cup in 2010, the number of Americans who have watched, attended, or listened to a major soccer match has increased by 32%. If most of your employees start streaming the games or highlights simultaneously, can your Internet bandwidth sustain the demand? 42% of IT professionals state that popular events impact their network. How many simultaneous users watching game highlights does it take to saturate your bandwidth? Just 2 streaming users result in a 1 megabit-per-second download, while 17 users equal a huge 10 megabits per second. The Internet bandwidth is quickly overwhelmed. Given the time difference with Brazil, most of the 64 matches will be played during U.S. office hours, and streaming video could deal a major blow to corporate network and application performance. When the first match of the day kicks off, smartphones, tablets, and laptops will be streaming footage live from offices around the U.S.

In addition to the major spike in bandwidth usage, World Cup 2014 malware sites are out there! According to a recent survey from Osterman research, some kind of malware has infiltrated 74% of organizations via the Web increasing security risks. Another major revenue loss for companies is lost productivity. The World Cup 2014 is 27 days, 66 matches, and a total of 99 hours average wages lost per hour each day.

Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products and services help all types of organizations manage and control employee Web activity.Cyfin and CyBlock products do this by monitoring, filtering, and bandwidth throttling employees’ Web use, and reporting on the activity by content categories, e.g., sports, social networking, games, and others. Of particular note, with regard to the World Cup, CyBlock products can be set up to block Web access by categories and by half hour so employees can access sports sites on their lunch break or after hours. This approach can help sustain morale while minimizing lost productivity and bandwidth associated with the World Cup.

Cyfin Syslog Server is Now Available

We are pleased to announce the release of the Cyfin Syslog Server. This new feature allows our customers to send syslog data directly to Cyfin. Previously, customers would have to install and configure a third-party syslog server. This new feature will streamline the setup process and simplify administration for our customers. There is no limit to the number of configured syslog servers, and each syslog server can be set to receive syslog data from different firewalls, proxies, and gateway devices simultaneously. Cyfin will then aggregate the data across all the configured syslog devices and generate a single report that contains all the information you are looking for in an easy-to-read actionable format.

Currently support devices:Cyfin_Full_F_Syslog

  • Astaro Security
  • Barracuda Networks
  • Bloxx Proxy
  • EdgeWave iPrism
  • FortiGate
  • NETGEAR
  • Palo Alto Firewall
  • SonicWALL Security Appliance
  • St. Bernard iPrism Syslog
  • WatchGuard Firebox (Syslog)

If you don’t see your device listed, please contact us or upload a sample log and we can quickly add it to our supported list.

If you are at version 9.0.5, you can upgrade to the latest release by going to the Help – Check for Updates screen in your product.

If you are not at version 9.0.5, you can download the latest release by going to Cyfin Downloads.

For additional assistance, please feel free to contact us.