Category Archives: Tech Tips

Feeling neglected? Let’s fix that.

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It seems the newly named Forcepoint has finally settled into the company they planned since the Raytheon acquisition of Websense. As a Websense customer before the acquisition, are you feeling a bit neglected now? In this new corporate culture, are you finding it difficult to get a hold of technical support or that customer service is not there when you need them? Could it be that their focus is more on the larger Raytheon cyber security customer base than on their Websense customers? Whichever the case, your business is the one that suffers. Stop spending your precious time on working through multiple levels of bureaucracy to get what you need.

Wavecrest has comprehensive, agile, and reliable solutions for your employee Web-use security and analytics needs, ranging from software and hardware deployments to cloud and hybrid deployments. No matter your business size, industry, or distributed workforce, Wavecrest has a solution for you.

Retaining a positive SMB mentality, the Wavecrest team believes strongly in one-on-one communication with prospects, customers, and partners. When you reach out to us, we have a human being on the other end of the line that knows the product well, communicates well, and will take the extra step to get your enterprise and employees secure. You don’t have to go through automated calls, ticketing, or several levels of technical support to reach the person with the knowledge you need.

Leave the government contractor-level pricing, contractual terms, and confusion behind. Don’t remain just a ticket number. Let Wavecrest focus on your business and your specific requirements. Talk to us today.

About Wavecrest Computing

Celebrating 20 years in business, Wavecrest Computing, headquartered in historic downtown Melbourne, FL, has provided commercial business and government clients with reliable, accurate Web-use management and Cloud Access Security Broker products since 1996. Managed Service Providers, IT specialists, HR professionals, and business managers trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to manage employee Internet usage — managing cloud services, reducing liability risks, improving productivity, saving bandwidth, and controlling costs. Wavecrest has clients worldwide, including General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Florida Department of Health, Siemens, Department of Homeland Security, and a growing list of global enterprises and government agencies. We are a proud long-term GSA contract holder. For more information on the company, products, and partners, visit https://www.wavecrest.net.

Cyber Monday is Quickly Approaching is Your Network Ready?

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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 is excited to unveil our new product knowledge base.

This new knowledge base will provide immediate, 24/7 support to our global customer base. Customers will be able to quickly find the answers they are looking for. The knowledge base comes with an enhanced search tool that shows relevant results as you type, dramatically reducing the resolution time.

Our top-rated technical support staff will be continuously updating the knowledge base. Wavecrest’s technical support staff is committed to providing customers with the best possible product experience. This commitment to quality will ensure the knowledge base will always yield the highest quality results for our customers. Through the knowledge base, customers will also be able to access detailed product release notes, tech tips, and the Wavecrest blog.

Wavecrest is always striving to provide continuously improved, higher level customer support. We furnish our customers with more than just a ‘product’, we provide them with a long-term ‘package’ that combines a cost-effective product with free support services whose priority is equal to that of product design. These services are available during the free product evaluation period and remains throughout the product license term.

See what existing customers are saying about Wavecrest’s technical support team:

“The Wavecrest support engineers are always eager and responsive to assist with any technical challenges facing our network. They have truly made my support to our customer relatively seamless.” -David Scott, Lockheed Martin CITIC

“Any pre-sales questions we had were answered promptly, and Wavecrest’s technical support ranks in the top 5% of all technical support I have worked with in 29 years of being in IT.” -Karleen Carlson, IT Manager, Van Diest Supply Company

“I can’t say enough about the service we have received from Wavecrest in general. From the sales team working with us through the trial and purchase period, to the support team that has answered each of our ‘quirks’.” -Allen Lochamy, Atlanta Bonded Warehouse

“Wavecrest has the best support of any company out there. Their staff members are always courteous to work with and knowledgeable about their product – which is a rarity in this type of work.” -Chris Martin, A+ Computer Solutions

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Running Reports in the New CyBlock/Cyfin UI

With the release of the new user interface, managing reports is easier than ever before. The new UI streamlines the way reports are managed by displaying recently run reports and scheduled reports all in one location. It also consolidates scheduling a report with creating a report. The following highlights of the new features describe how to navigate through reporting.

First, you need to select the type of report you want to create. On the Reports Selection page, the reports are grouped by similarity, and a Tooltip provides a short description of the report to help you determine which report to run. Click the name of the report that you want to run.

ReportSelection

This takes you to the Create Report page where you can run the report at the present time (unscheduled). You can also schedule the report to run automatically at a specific time, that is, daily, weekly, or monthly at a specific hour, or set up the report to run manually as needed.

 

CreateReport

Report delivery options allow you to wait for the report, e-mail the report to multiple addresses that you specify, and save the report to a location. E-mailing reports to group recipients has been replaced with allowing you to easily specify each e-mail address to which you want to send the report. Recipients will also receive an e-mail should a report fail to run for any reason. Saving the report to a group directory has been replaced with allowing you to save to any directory. If the directory does not exist, it will be created.

After you run or schedule your report, it will be displayed on the Manage Reports page.

 

ManageReports

The Recently Run Reports list shows all reports that were last run, that is, scheduled and unscheduled reports. The Scheduled Reports list shows reports that will run automatically at a specific time and those that will be run manually at a later time as needed.

Once you have run or scheduled reports, the Manage Reports page allows you to run, edit, duplicate, schedule, delete, and view these reports. You can also create new reports from this page.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

 

Viewing Exceeded IDs for Your License

When you run a report and it shows that you have exceeded your license limit, you can determine the reason by viewing the idnir.txt file. The idnir.txt file is generated when your license limit has been exceeded and is located in the …\wc\cf\db folder for Cyfin or the …\wc\cyblock\db folder for CyBlock Software.

The idnir.txt file will show all the IDs that exceeded your license limit and were not in the report you ran.

You can determine whether these IDs are internal users, external IP addresses, or other extraneous types of IDs. Viewing this file will allow you to assess whether you have a logging issue or whether your number of licensed users needs to be increased.

To increase your number of licensed users, please contact Wavecrest Sales toll-free at (877) 442-9346, Ext. 3, or send an e-mail to sales@wavecrest.net.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

Changing the Password for Interactive Reports

Interactive Reporting allows users to get more detailed information on employee Web use by clicking a report’s elements. For example, from a high-level report such as Site Analysis, you can click an ID name, and a User Audit Detail report will automatically begin running on that user.

Interactive reports are delivered to recipients via a link in a report e-mail. A password is needed to retrieve the reports because they are password protected. The default password is “password;” however, this can be easily changed.

  1. Go to the Advanced Settings – Report Settings – Interactive Reports screen.

  1. In the Reports Password field, type the new password that you want to use.
  2. Click Submit.
  3. When an Interactive report is sent via e-mail to a recipient, the recipient will receive a link (or two links depending on server settings) to the report.
  4. To open the report, click the appropriate link. A screen is displayed to enter a password to retrieve the report.

  1. Type your new password and click Login.
  2. After the report is opened, click an ID name to get more details on a user’s Web activity. By clicking the ID name, a request is submitted to get a User Audit Detail report on that particular user, and the report for that user is displayed.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

How to Properly Configure Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Configuring Windows Server 2012 and 2008 R2 to push out a group policy to all users can be challenging with Microsoft’s introduction of Group Policy Preferences. These preferences provide more than 20 Group Policy extensions that increase the number of configurable settings in a Group Policy object (GPO). Within most preference items, the configuration interface looks similar to the applicable user interface for configuring settings so the layout will be familiar. The guidelines to set up users’ browsers with a proxy configuration are alike for Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9, and 10, and the following instructions are for Internet Explorer 10.

  1. Go to Group Policy Management, and select the GPO to which you want to add the Internet Explorer 10 settings.
  2. Edit the GPO.
  3. In the Group Policy Management Editor, go to User Configuration, Preferences, Control Panel Settings, and then Internet Settings. If you have already created settings for Internet Explorer 7, 8, and 9, they will be displayed here.
  4. Right-click in the right-hand pane, select “New,” and then select “Internet Explorer 10.”
  5. In the New Internet Explorer 10 Properties dialog box, click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings.
  6. Under Proxy server, select the check box to enable the “Use a proxy server…” option.
  7. In the Address field, enter the IP address of your proxy server, and in the Port field, enter the port number.
  8. Now you need to enable the settings and apply them to all users. You can individually enable and disable underlined settings or settings preceded by a circle within a preference item. The underlining or circle of the setting indicates whether it is currently enabled or disabled.
    • A setting with a solid green underline or a green circle is enabled. The preference extension applies this setting’s value to the user or computer.
    • A setting with a dashed red underline or red circle with a slash is disabled. The preference extension does not apply this setting’s value to the user or computer.
  9. Press the following function keys to enable or disable the settings within a preference item. To select a setting, click the actual text of the setting or its text field.

      • F5 – Enable all settings on the current tab.
      • F6 – Enable the currently selected setting.
      • F7 – Disable the currently selected setting.
      • F8 – Disable all settings on the current tab.

    The following diagram illustrates how the function keys work.

  10. After enabling the settings, select the check box to enable the “Bypass proxy server…” option.
  11. Click OK, Apply, and then OK to save the changes. You will see the Internet Settings entry for Internet Explorer 10 along with Internet Explorer 7, 8, and 9, if they were previously created.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

Sources:

https://blogs.technet.com/b/grouppolicy/archive/2008/10/13/red-green-gp-preferences-doesn-t-work-even-though-the-policy-applied-and-after-gpupdate-force.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754299.aspx

Using Safe Search With Secure Sites

With our CyBlock Safe Search feature enabled, you can force the Bing, Google, and Yahoo! search engines to use the “strict” Safe Search setting on search result pages. This ensures that adult content will be filtered from your search results. To check that Safe Search is enabled, go to the Advanced Settings – Filter Settings screen and click the Block Search Terms link. The Safe Search Status indicator should be green. If it is red (disabled), click it once. When enabled, CyBlock will reset search engines to Safe Search even if users change the setting in the search engine.

To enforce Safe Search when performing search queries using a secure connection (https://) to Bing, Google, or Yahoo! and Safe Search is enabled, SSL Inspection has to be turned on for the categories in which these search engine sites reside. By default, this category is Search Engines. To enable SSL Inspection, go to Advanced Settings – Proxy Settings and click the SSL Inspection link. Select your groups and/or IDs and categories including any custom categories that contain these search engine sites. Adult content will then be filtered from search results.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

Displaying the Blocking Message When Connecting to a Secure Site

Using CyBlock Software or CyBlock Appliance, a secure Web site (https://domain) can be blocked by blocking the corresponding category, explicit URL, or custom category in which the URL has been added. If the secure site contains a path (https://domain/path), the URL match is made on only the domain portion by default. SSL Inspection has to be turned on with the associated blocked category set to be inspected in order to match on the domain and path portions combined.

However, the following issue may be encountered with the browser for a secure site (https://domain). When a user attempts to connect to a blocked secure site through CyBlock Software or CyBlock Appliance, the browser is only capable of receiving a Connection Established header response. Any other response, including a blocking message, is treated as a failed connection, and contents embedded in the response are not rendered due to security constraints.

Therefore, in order to display the blocking message when a user is connecting to a blocked secure site, the proxy must first send a Connection Established header which will require an SSL certificate to be accepted by the browser. This certificate is generated using the Wavecrest root certificate. If the Wavecrest root certificate is not already installed in the browser, a certificate warning message will be issued that must be accepted in order to display the blocking message. Please see the Wavecrest Certificate Installation Guide for instructions on how to install and distribute the Wavecrest root certificate and prevent the certificate warning message for your users.

If you do not accept the certificate when you receive the warning message, just a blank page will be rendered in the browser with a generic browser error message.

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.

Downloading Windows 8 Apps

Companies that filter and monitor Web traffic by user name do so in order to enforce their Acceptable Use Policy and for reporting purposes. In order to obtain user names for filtering and reporting purposes, they enable the authentication of all Web requests. An issue that arises with authentication is that there are some Web apps that do not respond to authentication requests.  This is the case with Windows 8 apps.

In order for the Windows 8 operating system to download apps through CyBlock Software or CyBlock Appliance, entries need to be made in the Authentication Manager. This work-around puts these apps in an authentication “Bypass” list where they are exempt from authentication. CyBlock will not require authentication for any URL/User-Agent combination established in the Bypass list. Any user name cached for this connection will be used. If none is cached, the activity will be logged with the user name of “bypass.” The steps below should be followed.

  1. Go to the Advanced Settings – Proxy Settings screen, and click the Authentication Managerlink.
  2. Under Display Selection, select Bypassed or All to display the Bypassed entries. Note that the All option will display the Pending Bypass entries also.
  3. Under Bypassed, click the Add new bypass entry link. A dialog box is displayed.
  4. Enter each of the following combinations of URL or Domain and User-Agent, and click Add after each entry.
URL or Domain User-Agent
*.apps.microsoft.com *
*ws.microsoft.com *
* MSappsHost/*

 

The entries on the screen should look like the following example.

CyBlock Authentication Bypassed Entries

 

For additional assistance, please contact Technical Support at (321) 953-5351, Ext. 4 or support@wavecrest.net.