Tag Archives: visibility

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.

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

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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.

Have even more visibility with Wavecrest’s new comparison feature!

compare-contrastWavecrest is pleased to announce an informative new feature that is now included with the latest versions of CyBlock and Cyfin. Now you can compare Web activity trends in selected date ranges to find anomalies or spikes in usage, compare series activity by metric such as Visits, or view the percentage change in activity from the previous to the current period.

The more visibility you have into your company’s Web activity, the more informed your Web-use decisions are. Each business is unique–you make the decisions on what is acceptable or not! Determine these policies, add them to your enterprise Acceptable Use Policy, and proactively protect your business, your data, and your employees.

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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.

Do You Have the Necessary Enterprise Cloud Services Visibility?

img_cloud_computingToday, cloud services are the way businesses run. Collaboration among employees, file sharing, data storage, and even accounting are accomplished via cloud services. There are very few businesses left that use absolutely no cloud services. It is just a fact that we all live in a world with data spread out everywhere, at speeds we could not even fathom ten years ago. Hence, the concept of Shadow IT, Shadow Data, and Shadow IoT (Internet of Things) are becoming more commonplace terms. All of these are basically variations on employees using services and devices outside of their IT department’s knowledge. What does it all mean when running your business? Two questions . . . do you know what cloud services are being used and where your data is going?

Visibility . . . a key element for enterprise security. Knowing what cloud services your users are accessing is detailed visibility that a business can’t live without. Unsanctioned cloud applications and services can expose the company’s network and data security to a long list of serious threats. The IT department knows managers want the Web-usage visibility too . . . without the rest of the “visual noise” and meaningless information (to them, at least). They want detail on what employees are doing with cloud services, and they want it easily accessible, interactive, understandable, and meaningful.

It is time to take a good look at what’s being used to monitor and control your employees’ cloud services usage. Make sure you have a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solution that gives you the critical cloud services management tools you need. Learn more about how to Detect, Analyze, and Manage Cloud Services in the Enterprise.

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.