Tag Archives: reporting

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.

Is your business’ human operating system secure?

Everyone is worried about operating systems, whether it is network operations, business operations, or a desktop operating system. The functionality of these intricate parts of your business are critical. But have you thought about your employees and how they operate? Today, your human operating system needs to be more than just making sure your employees are doing their job. Human vulnerabilities are a primary target for cyber criminals. Your human operating system, or the human factor, needs to be manageable and efficient, with tools in place that proactively support an open, yet secure, digital work environment.

Insider threats can be found at the top of headlines almost every day. Listen carefully to what each event tells you. It can happen to you, no matter how big or how small your business is. You don’t have to be a government organization to be susceptible to an insider threat. Insider threats can be a malicious employee who may be upset at the company, a good employee who just makes a mistake, or a targeted employee who unknowingly allows a malicious user into the network or access to proprietary data. Whatever the cause, there has to be tools in place to combat these human factor Web-use risks.

The human factor in business Web use is complicated in many ways. Hackers target natural human vulnerabilities and mistakes happen, employees can be sensitive to being singled out or afraid to admit the mistake, and fully blocking all access in today’s digital work world will likely just limit productivity and upset employees. The key? Visibility into the human factor. See how and when your employees use their Internet access. With that visibility into Web-use detail, you can then manage the usage to fit your unique business needs and gain a comprehensive, proactive way to secure and protect your business.

Securing and managing your enterprise’s human operating system in a proactive and efficient manner will help reduce cyber risks, such as phishing, malware intrusions, ransomware, data loss, employee misuse, legal liabilities, bandwidth hogs, shadow IT, and more. Find a solution that fits your business and your budget. Make sure it is flexible, easy to use, and easy to manage, allowing you to secure and shape employee Web-use–on your terms.

About Wavecrest

Wavecrest has over 20 years of proven history of providing reliable, accurate Web-use management and Advanced Log File Analyzer products across various industries. Managed Service Providers, IT specialists, HR professionals, Forensics Investigators, and business managers trust Wavecrest’s Cyfin and CyBlock products to manage the human factor in business Internet usage — managing cloud services, reducing liability risks, improving productivity, saving bandwidth, and controlling 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 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.

Productivity in a Time of Endless Distractions

time online image

Employees have access to all kinds of digital distractions every minute of the day. So, businesses have to make a decision what is acceptable for Internet use when employees are on the clock. This decision can be hard. There are many who think of privacy issues, not wanting to deter human interaction, or who even have a “my managers watch over their employees so I leave it to them” thought. The only real problem is . . . it’s your business that will suffer if Internet-usage privileges are abused on a regular basis. Bandwidth slowdowns and productivity loss, not to mention increased malware risk, can have a substantial impact on your business. No matter which decision you make for your business, you still need to know what is happening to keep your company, your data, and your employees secure and productive.

You need visibility. If you keep up with our Wavecrest posts, we tend to emphasize this point a lot. Why? Because it is a crucial business tool for today’s digital workplace! You have to know what is happening in your business and on your network so you can make informed business decisions. In this particular case, you need visibility into employees’ time spent online.

Wavecrest Computing’s Time Online feature provides the time that a user spends on the Internet in a useful and informative format with easy-to-interpret charts. Find out which users spend the most time online, spot spikes, and analyze usage for productivity issues or potential bandwidth hogs. Each business is unique and your Internet-use policy should fit your specific business needs. Find the visibility necessary to keep productivity high and mission-critical operations running smoothly, with Cyfin and CyBlock solutions from Wavecrest Computing.

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.

Potential Victims to Very Smart Thieves

cat paw stealing cookie

Employees need to know what their employers’ philosophy is behind technology. Does my employer want me to use whatever app I choose? Can I just store and share work information where it is most convenient for me? Will my employer listen when I explain how much my cloud app does to improve my workflow? If you as the employer listen, you could save your business from an incident or a serious breach.

It is amazing that the news is filled with data breach, data loss, ransomware, and spear phishing, and yet many businesses still think they are immune from an attack. If you are connected to the Internet, you are a highly susceptible victim. Do not take this to mean that you should not run your business with the highly efficient and collaborative tools that cloud services offer. It just means think and act to protect your enterprise assets and employees.

Let’s first cover where a major number of incidents start. Your enterprise weakness . . . the employee. It doesn’t matter if you have the best employees in the universe, they are human. Hackers perfect the way they attack; that is their job. They have become so good at what they do that good employees send out W-2s, transfer millions to banks in foreign countries, and hand out their logon credentials without question.

Now let’s talk about what you can do to help your employees to not become victims.

  • Educate them; make them a part of the process. Communicate. It is everyone’s fight.
  • Go ahead and make your most techy employee an honorary go-to person for others with questions.
  • Gain visibility with proactive monitoring tools. Trust me–this is not an employee privacy invasion. You need to know what is going on first; then make informed decisions.
  • Make sure there is a process in place for an employee who questions something. Make the process part of your Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

And then the important basics we all know, but are worth repeating . . .

  • Back up regularly and make sure your recovery process is tried and true. Think ransomware attack recovery, so keep it where you can get to it but others can’t.
  • Patch – There is no longer an option to do updates. Many are for security, so just do it and do it consistently. It’s patch management, not patch whenever.
  • Passwords – Maintain, manage, and get creative. Use a password manager if needed.
  • Off-boarding – Make sure to purge all credentials for ex-employees or contractors. How do you know if they are still there? Monitor!!
  • Layered security – Get a firewall, but don’t expect all-in-one add-ons to be impressive. For example, don’t expect the firewall Web-use reporting feature to provide comprehensive and interactive reporting capability. Invest in the solution that means serious employee Web-use reporting business–no more wishy-washy reports that are useless.

Think and act to protect your enterprise assets and employees. Take some time to communicate with your employees about the exploits that they may fall prey to. It is not their fault; they are not an “insider threat” but a potential victim to very smart thieves.

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.

Feeling neglected? Let’s fix that.

article-5-photo

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.

Wavecrest, the leader in Web security, and Check Point have announced a partnership.

CF_Full_FWavecrest Computing, a leading global provider of advanced Web security solutions, and Check Point Software Technologies have announced a technology partnership.

Wavecrest’s Cyfin, along with Check Point log files, efficiently and accurately make for an easy-to-manage, cost-effective log file analyzer and reporter. This integration easily addresses collection and analysis of Web-use activity data by producing rapid, accurate, and actionable, manager-ready reports for audits, investigations, or distribution. Predefined reports, such as top users or sites, bandwidth, legal liability detail, and user audit detail, as well as the benefit for managers to run selected user reports by department, provide visibility into every aspect of enterprise Web-use activity. Learn more at: https://www.wavecrest.net

Wavecrest Computing announces CyBlock Hybrid’s new reporting features.

 

Wavecrest Computing announces new reporting features are now available in the CyBlock Hybrid deployment. Reporting features, Real-Time Monitor and Dashboard Charts, can easily be accessed for both your CyBlock Cloud and local  CyBlock configurations. This enhancement allows the customer to easily monitor and develop reports on users, both local and remote.

Use Real-Time Monitor to see remote users’ current Web activity, or use Dashboard Charts to check on- or off-premises Web traffic trending by users, groups, categories, or denied and allowed traffic. Run a report for management or an audit that can include cloud, local, or all configurations. The new features proactively increase your administration capabilities while reducing the time you spend on Web management tasks.

The CyBlock Hybrid deployment is used when an on-site CyBlock installation is paired with CyBlock Cloud to provide coverage of remote users with the convenience of local administration for all users. Contact us for more information today!

Constantly improving, developing, and enhancing to make your Web security more efficient, Wavecrest Computing has been the recognized leader in Web Security Solutions for over 19 years. Wavecrest’s scalable filtering and forensic reporting analysis product lines, CyBlock and Cyfin, are designed to enable organizations to successfully address Internet abuse, legal liability, shadow IT, workforce productivity, malware, and many other Web security threats.

Cloud Hybrid Reporting
CyBlock Cloud – Hybrid Report

 

Raw log file download capability is now available for CyBlock Software, CyBlock Appliance, and CyBlock Cloud.

bigdatakeyWavecrest keeps increasing and enhancing the capabilities of CyBlock to provide more efficiency and ease-of-use features–all so that you can concentrate more on your mission-critical operations. Our newest enhancement to CyBlock Software, CyBlock Appliance, and CyBlock Cloud allows you to download and view raw log files collected with CyBlock. Quickly downloaded through Data Management’s Log Data Source, it is stress-free to access your organization’s Internet-usage big data information. The log files are compressed and combined into a ZIP file to be downloaded to a location of your choice, for potential future use in forensic investigations, required log file storage, or per your enterprise’s employee security policy. Log file selections can be chosen for downloading one day or a range of days making it easy to focus on exactly what you need.

Raw log file download is just another way Wavecrest supports your need for easy access to detailed organizational Internet-usage security information, To find out more about Wavecrest and our Web Security Solutions, visit www.wavecrest.net.

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.