Tag Archives: bandwidth abuse

Are Santas taking over your network?

Santas on computers at Virgin Megastore

Can you believe that it is almost the end of the year already? A lot has happened for us this year, and it seems to have made the year go even faster. No matter how fast or slow the year went for you, it is time for all of us to think of the holiday shopping season that is coming up.

Every year, it is predicted that more and more of us will be using online shopping to get a good portion of our list taken care of. With time constraints in normal life, your employees are definitely going to sneak in some shopping on their work devices, clogging up your network bandwidth with nonessential traffic–and it probably won’t just be on Cyber Monday!

Don’t experience additional holiday stress. Go ahead and allow your employees a bit of freedom to do some surfing to find the right toy, tie, or TV for their loved ones. But also give yourself, your IT department, and your whole business the gift of knowing your mission-critical business operations come first, with the bandwidth management, filtering, and reporting tools in our CyBlock Employee Web-use Security Solution.

CyBlock will help you and your IT team with:

  • Bandwidth Management
    • Uncover Web activity that can cause network slowdowns.
    • Spot spikes that could indicate excessive data use.
    • Identify which categories have the most visits triggering high bandwidth usage.
    • Pinpoint which bandwidth-intensive sites are being visited, hogging enterprise bandwidth, and potentially posing security risks.
    • Automatically throttle nonessential traffic by content category or group.
    • Stay informed with triggered alerts and real-time monitoring.
  • Web-use Filtering and Reporting
    • Limit the time users are online by the hour and day of the week.
    • Identify risk, and analyze usage of your network resources.
    • Configure policy exceptions for different users and groups.
    • Use white & black lists to restrict or allow access to certain sites.
    • Cover your main office, remote users, and branch offices.
    • Get complete, accurate, actionable, & compliance-ready reports.

Find ways to satisfy all your business and employee needs. Give your employees the gift of online shopping time during this holiday season, while making sure your IT team receives the gift of proactively throttling bandwidth for noncritical applications, getting alerts, and gaining visibility into bandwidth hogs.

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 and guest Wi-Fi 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.

Prioritize network traffic and increase network QoS with CyBlock Bandwidth Management.

In the current Internet-connected enterprise, constant and rapid changes require IT to have proactive control over the organization’s bandwidth. Many organizations now allow the use of tools such as DropBox, social media, and streaming, as well as BYOD use for, and during, business operations. The idea is to use these tools for business productivity. But then combine this with any personal use of these tools, or other services, and you have a bandwidth drain on the company network. For an IT administrator, this holds many more challenges in how to make sure priorities are set for bandwidth. With CyBlock’s Bandwidth Management feature, we can help you battle bandwidth hogs, improving your network QoS and keeping your mission-critical operations running smoothly!

Learn more: https://www.wavecrest.net/products/cyblock/sa/include/BandwidthManagement.pdf

realtimebandwidthmonitor

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 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/

 

March Madness Starts This Week! – Estimated $1.9 billion Lost for Every Unproductive Hour

This week is the beginning of one of the most popular events of the year… March Madness!  An exciting month for sports fans everywhere!

The exMarch Madnesscitement during the tournament is addictive! Employees have office pools and discuss the games all through the day. The trouble with March Madness? It occurs during the work day. “An average of 10.7 million people watched March Madness games in 2013, the most since 1994.” During this time, an organization does need to worry.

Management needs to be concerned about low productivity, “An MSN poll in 2012 found that 56% of respondents, equivalent to 77.1 million employees, planned to devote at least one hour to March Madness. Using those figures, the damages rise to $1.9 billion for every unproductive hour.” IT, as well as management, needs to worry about the risk of lower bandwidth for critical business operations, “Turner Sports, which operates the NCAA’s website, said 6.8 million unique visitors watched games online during the first week of last year’s tournament. Visitors spent an average of 1 hour and 51 minutes online each time they opened a stream.” These disruptions can cause major problems with the normal operations of any business.

March Madness begins March 18th and runs through the beginning of April. Revisit your organization’s AUP and let your employees know the negative impact their actions could have on the organization.

It is a good time to think seriously about making one of Wavecrest Computing’s CyBlock Advanced Web Security solutions a priority. Whether you are thinking you would like to block all access to sports, or thinking you would like to allow some time for your employees to enjoy March Madness while maintaining control over crucial business operations. CyBlock Advanced Web Security solutions can do both. CyBlock can easily block sports or, just as easily, allow for filtering by time frame. Implement flexible filtering by day, hour, or half hour while controlling bandwidth, threat protection, and enforcing your AUP in an easy to manage interface. With deployments options of CyBlock Cloud with the optional CyBlock Mobile Security App, CyBlock Software, CyBlock ISA/TMG, or CyBlock Appliance, Wavecrest can help you find the solution that you need now.  Many of these options can be up and running the day you purchase. Do not wait until the Final Four’s final basket!

 

*Excerpts from Foxbusiness.com, March Madness Ready to Distract Workers Nationwide, By Matthew Rocco Published March 11, 2014

Control Excessive Bandwidth Consumption with Wavecrest Filtering and Reporting

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Bandwidth consumption is an increasing concern for all organizations as bandwidth-intensive sites and video streaming become more popular.  The table below offers several examples of the amount of bandwidth that different online activities consume.

Activity or File Size (in kb)
One hour of IM chatting with AOL 10
Send a one-page text email with Gmail 150
View five different articles in Wikipedia 1,200
Upload a 10MP JPEG photo in Flickr 2,400
Downloading a 3 minute song from iTunes 5,600
Watch a 5 minute YouTube video 12,500
Watch episode of “The Simpsons” 25,000
Listen to one hour of music on Pandora 56,300
Compressed version of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” 800,000

As the table shows, many online activities that are probably not work related utilize a lot of bandwidth.  The last thing any organization needs is network latency or slowdowns due to non-work related online activity.

To mitigate this problem, CyBlock and Cyfin provide IT with the information needed to determine 1) if the bandwidth consumption is work related and 2) if any measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of consumption.  Both products provide quantified data (via Web-use reports) that can help IT personnel keep track of network (bandwidth) utilization by users as well as by type of usage (appropriate or not so appropriate).

The Dashboard is the easiest way to get a quick view of bandwidth usage.  You can quickly find the top bandwidth consumers by users, groups, categories or sites.  You can also check when spikes in bandwidth activity occur.

The reports below can also be used to monitor bandwidth usage by users and identify potentially troublesome sites.

  • 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.
  • Top Users Report – This report displays the top hits, visits, and kilobytes by user.

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.

By monitoring and using the reports listed above, you can:

  1. Obtain an accurate, content-categorized picture of network usage patterns
  2. Identify bandwidth abusers for management attention
  3. Prevent bandwidth wastage through intelligent filtering
  4. Improve IT system performance and reduce bandwidth costs.

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