Tag Archives: business

Really? Is it really time to think about holiday shopping? Already?!

Manage Holiday Web Usage with CyBlock

Yes–now is the time. The holidays are right around the corner and definitely require attention now so your business can prepare for the increase in Web usage and the associated risks. There are many reasons for your business to pay close attention to Internet activity at this time of year (and all year). But there is one primary focus that could easily help with all the cyber risks to your business–managing the natural human vulnerability that cyber thieves take advantage of.

Did you know that most breaches are initially caused by employee error? “Ninety-two percent of all incidents are, and 84 percent of all data breaches were, unintentional or inadvertent in nature,” states an article from iapp.org. No matter what kind of data loss or breach it is, human error likely played a very important role.

Shopping season can bring out even more human vulnerabilities than usual. Malicious Web sites can look real and carry what looks like legitimate product offerings, advertising can be more enticing with hard-to-resist discounts, and e-mails can come from legitimate e-mail addresses hacked by these talented criminals. Humans’ emotional nature can make it hard to resist when we are all looking for that special or hard-to-get gift. It is important to make sure your business–and your employees–are protected by an easy-to-setup solution that is comprehensive and proactive.

This is easier than you think. Access to a comprehensive Web management solution will allow you to manage usage in a way that suits your unique business philosophy. This includes whether you want to allow or restrict access to certain Web sites at a particular time of day, monitor usage with reporting features by analyzing trends and tracking usage, or just meet compliance and regulation requirements.

This time of year, it is important to spend some extra time paying attention to your organization’s Web use. But Web-use management should be part of your business process and security all year round. Find a solution that is flexible enough to grow or change with you throughout the year, and for this time of year … let them shop … and know you are still being proactive and secure.

Cyfin® provides advanced User Behavior Analytics and Reporting for a wide variety of gateway devices and log file formats. Comprehensive yet easy to use, its customized reporting capabilities supply audience-specific information with reliable metrics, easy-to-read reporting dashboards, manager-ready detailed audit reports, and Smart Engine analytics. Cyfin is available in various deployment options: Cyfin Virtual Appliance and Cyfin Forensic.

CyBlock® Employee Web Filtering and Monitoring Solutions provide advanced Web filtering, threat protection, comprehensive employee reporting, Smart Engine analytics, easy-to-use admin and manager portals, and more. Customers can easily configure CyBlock to monitor and manage compliance with their usage policies. CyBlock is available in various deployment options: CyBlock Virtual Appliance, CyBlock Cloud, and CyBlock Hybrid.

Wavecrest has over 25 years of proven history of providing reliable, accurate Web-use management and Advanced Log File Analyzer products across various industries. IT specialists, business managers, HR professionals, Managed Service Providers, and Forensics Investigators trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to easily decipher and manage, and report on, real employee Web activity, manage cloud services, reduce liability risks, improve productivity, save bandwidth, and control costs. Trusted by small, medium, and large government and commercial organizations worldwide. For more information on the company, products, and partners, visit Wavecrest.

Remote Working & Managing Internet Use

Specifically built to serve remote and roaming users, CyBlock Cloud will follow your users to wherever they are working.
Specifically built to serve remote and roaming users, CyBlock Cloud will follow your users to wherever they are working.

We all hope this coronavirus doesn’t last long. That’s clear. But because of this, companies seem to be realizing that social distancing is a good idea, and they can have people working remotely in a positive way. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft – the list keeps growing. They are taking this head-on and moving their employees off-site, potentially protecting their entire workforce from an onsite health crisis.

How does remote working fit into work overall? The numbers that come out of all this should be interesting, especially the numbers for the companies that finally realize they can operate this way and not lose any control over Internet security, productivity, liability, and more. Buzzfeed reports in its March 4th article*, “some in the industry are looking at the outbreak as a test case for the long-gestating but never-arriving moment when working remotely will broadly replace working in person.”

Many businesses have traveling workers. Salespeople, Technical Support staff, and others, but now we are looking at the driving force being something out of our control. The businesses that have made this decision are supporting a healthy workforce as a whole. Businesses that do choose to do this also know that they are still responsible for employees’ online activity. So how does a company support its business when its workforce is scattered everywhere?

The answer is a comprehensive Internet use management solution with an easy, flexible cloud deployment that travels with your employees. So, for example, the employee goes home with a company laptop, the company Internet use would be managed by the cloud solution.

What should you look for when looking at Internet-use cloud solutions?

  • Should deploy in minutes with simple, intuitive steps.
  • Follows users with perimeter-less coverage.
  • Is an easily scalable, highly elastic, and adaptable solution.
  • Always-on filtering with User/Group filter policies. 
  • Provides fast, efficient, manager-ready reporting.
  • Has no hardware installation and no maintenance.

CyBlock Cloud can provide all this and more. Specifically built to serve remote and roaming users, CyBlock Cloud will follow your users to wherever they are working.

Now is the best time to be prepared. Our Sales Team and Technical Staff are ready to help you get setup and going. We are all in this together! Contact us today at info@wavecrest.net.

About Us

CyBlock® Employee Web Filtering and Monitoring Solutions provide advanced Web filtering, threat protection, comprehensive employee reporting, Smart Engine with machine-learning analytics, easy-to-use admin and manager portals, and more. Customers can easily configure CyBlock to monitor and manage compliance with their usage policies. CyBlock is available in various deployment options: CyBlock Virtual Appliance, CyBlock Appliance, CyBlock Mini Appliance, CyBlock Cloud, and CyBlock Hybrid.

Cyfin® provides advanced employee Web-use analysis and reporting for a wide variety of gateway devices and log file formats. Comprehensive yet easy to use, its customizable reporting and machine-learning analytics supply audience-specific Web-use information with reliable metrics, easy-to-read reporting dashboards, manager-ready detailed audit reports, and Smart Engine analytics. Cyfin is available in various deployment options: Cyfin Virtual Appliance and Cyfin Forensic.

Wavecrest® has over 20 years of proven history of providing reliable, accurate Web-use management, filtering, reporting, and analytics products across various industries. IT specialists, business managers, HR professionals, Managed Service Providers, and Forensics Investigators trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to easily decipher and manage real employee Web activity, manage cloud services, reduce liability risks, improve productivity, save bandwidth, and control costs. Trusted by large government and commercial organizations such as US-CERT Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Justice, USPS Office of Inspector General, National Grid, Johns Hopkins, 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 Wavecrest.

*The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies To Work From Home. Some May Never Go Back The Office, buzzfeed.com, March 2020.

This year, allow your employees some freedom to watch March Madness!

Time to celebrate basketball!

One of basketball’s biggest events is here again. The past few months have been pretty emotional for fans. This may very well make this year’s March Madness even more focused and passionate for everyone. You can choose to let your employees catch up on results with maintaining the visibility, control, and security you need to keep your business running smoothly.

This year, Wavecrest Computing offers tips that you should know from past years but also some important new ones. Having customizable reports and the ability to see rollups of time spent online, we know these new tips will help you keep up with the changes in technology and streaming!

Let’s start with these new tips! We know seeing the real Web browsing activity should not be time-consuming and cumbersome: especially for busy managers, HR, legal, and yes, even IT. So, making sure the information is easy to understand is critical for your business all year but especially during a heavy Internet-use time.

  • Make sure your managers have access to see the info they need, when they need it, with their own restricted access. Manager Portal is a key component for business. 
  • Be sure you can customize reports for each manager so they can quickly and easily see their own employees’ Web usage without a lot of extra technical data. Customizable Report Templates and their drag-and-drop features makes life so much easier!
  • Roll it all up please! It’s important to know how much time is really spent on a web site. But with all the noise caused by ads, like buttons, share buttons, images, videos, and more…how do you know the real intentional activity you are looking for? Roll it all up under an understandable heading! Managers want to see activity for Facebook, ESPN, or NCAA! Tagging and rollup is the only thing that makes that available!

And of course, the tips you should already know to keep your business in good shape during this exciting time of year:

  • Not all ads or search results are real. March Madness search results or ads have been known for malware. Filtering, black/white listing, whatever way you choose. This is crucial!
  • Restrict sites that are inappropriate or illegal. Be aware of what your employees are doing online. Gambling sites are not just a legal issue but also tend to carry many security risks. Category filtering allows you to pick the whole category to block, the rest is taken care of.
  • Don’t let your bandwidth slow the rest of the business down. Make sure you are able to easily view and throttle current data usage for the entire enterprise, detect unexpected spikes that could indicate excessive data use, or just observe real-time updates. Throttling helps keep mission-critical business a priority, proactively.

The biggest tip for March Madness? Get your business set up with a Web-use management solution that will offer these tools all year long. Take it off your plate and breeze through the constant ups and downs of Internet usage. Shopping seasons, streaming seasons, current events…let them stay up to date without worrying about what it will do to your bottom line. Employees happy can easily outweigh the concerns during these times of more than usual Internet use. Be proactive… and let them celebrate.

Let us help.

This year, choose to allow your employees some freedom to watch and enjoy! Find out more about all the Web management product lines at Wavecrest Computing.

About Us

CyBlock® Employee Web Filtering and Monitoring Solutions provide advanced Web filtering, threat protection, comprehensive employee reporting, Smart Engine with machine-learning analytics, easy-to-use admin and manager portals, and more. Customers can easily configure CyBlock to monitor and manage compliance with their usage policies. CyBlock is available in various deployment options: CyBlock Virtual Appliance, CyBlock Appliance, CyBlock Mini Appliance, CyBlock Cloud, and CyBlock Hybrid.

Cyfin® provides advanced employee Web-use analysis and reporting for a wide variety of gateway devices and log file formats. Comprehensive yet easy to use, its customizable reporting and machine-learning analytics supply audience-specific Web-use information with reliable metrics, easy-to-read reporting dashboards, manager-ready detailed audit reports, and Smart Engine analytics. Cyfin is available in various deployment options: Cyfin Virtual Appliance and Cyfin Forensic.

Wavecrest has over 20 years of proven history of providing reliable, accurate Web-use management, filtering, reporting, and analytics products across various industries. IT specialists, business managers, HR professionals, Managed Service Providers, and Forensics Investigators trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to easily decipher and manage real employee Web activity, manage cloud services, reduce liability risks, improve productivity, save bandwidth, and control costs. Trusted by large government and commercial organizations such as US-CERT Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Justice, USPS Office of Inspector General, National Grid, Johns Hopkins, 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 Wavecrest.

Small can still be powerful!

CyBlock Mini Appliance – Compact yet Robust!

Don’t be fooled by the name–CyBlock Mini Appliance is powerful, comprehensive, and worth every inch of its compactness. Built for managing your business’ employee Internet access in the most convenient, budget-friendly way possible!

Maintaining visibility throughout your workforce is key to running a secure business today. Don’t settle on just any Web-use management solution that really doesn’t meet your needs. If you need coverage for a remote office, have limited space either in your server room or in your office, or are struggling with how to keep your business Internet access secure with a limited IT budget, Wavecrest has more choices than ever. No matter what business size or industry type, CyBlock Mini Appliance is likely to be just what you have been looking for.

The powerful Mini Appliance provides the comprehensive Web-use management capabilities of CyBlock, including URL filtering, comprehensive detailed reporting, secure guest Wi-Fi services with captive portal, advanced threat protection, bandwidth management, cloud services management, as well as coverage for non-HTTP activity, e.g., P2P, torrents, IM, and e-mail. Get all of this in one compact and economical package. The general size of a Wi-Fi hub, the Mini allows you to put it in the corner, on your desk, or in that tiny space you have left in your packed server room!

As a cost-effective choice for any business type or size, the robust, yet compact Mini Appliance provides the leading-edge, comprehensive Web-use filtering, reporting, and security capabilities of CyBlock. Designed to fit every business environment, the Mini Appliance can be paired with CyBlock Appliance or deployed on its own, depending on the required Web-use needs.

For more information on CyBlock Mini Appliance or any of our other products, please contact us today!

About Wavecrest ComputingFor over 20 years Wavecrest Computing, headquartered in historic downtown Melbourne, FL, has been providing commercial business and government clients with reliable, accurate Web-use management, monitoring, and analytics products. Managed Service Providers, IT specialists, HR professionals, and business managers trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to monitor and 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.

Are you making use of your data or just drowning in it?

drowning-in-dataVisibility and accessibility have always been crucial to a business, but today, it is visibility and accessibility into critical data. You don’t have hours or days to dig through the data your company produces, and it is likely it produces a lot, much more than you think. Data rules our world today and will in the future even more. According to DN Capital, all of us combined are producing 10 million Blu-ray Discs’ worth of data daily–enough to stack as high as 4 Eiffel Towers!

Much of this data is produced by users, not automation. As a business owner, you know your employees produce data every time they are working on a computer or using their devices, especially when they are using the Internet. Even if you know and trust your employees, if you do not monitor this data, you are likely putting your business at risk. They aren’t to blame. Many smart and loyal employees today are being taken advantage of by very convincing cyberthieves. You need to protect your business, your data, and in turn, your employees!

Small business owners are realizing there is no option. Some form of Web-use security to protect all your business assets, including your data, has to be used. The hard part for a business without extensive IT departments or personnel is finding the right security solution, especially finding one today that allows you to truly organize, understand, and manage your data. One recommendation . . . all-in-one corporate-level solutions are not something that a small business will get true return on investment (ROI) from. The never-ending list of what is included just means you “bought a car with a Wi-Fi Hotspot feature” you will likely never use! Try to make sure and focus on what your true need is, see what is going on, and start from there.

Finding an employee Web-use security solution with comprehensive reporting and analytics will add that extra layer of visibility into data that a small business needs to focus on. You should be able to run comprehensive reports providing forensic-level detail information that allows you to review and easily understand what is going on from the mountains of data that your employees produce. Make sure you can monitor bandwidth usage, Acceptable Use Policy requirements, legal liabilities, cloud services usage, productivity, time online, and more. All of this is important to keep your business running smoothly and securely. And lastly, it is making use of the most valuable company asset you have, your data.

Get visibility and understand your data. Secure your business and protect your employees from today’s cyber threats. We can help.

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.