How to Track Internet Use on a Network at Work
If your company is like most, many of your employees use the Internet at work for personal reasons, potentially robbing your company of productivity, and exposing your enterprise network to security threats such as worms, viruses and Trojan horses. While the more honest of your employees may only be using e-mail or doing online shopping, others may be surfing the Internet for more malicious purposes. Some tools allow you to track Internet usage on your network.
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Instructions
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Develop a written acceptable Internet use policy and train your employees on the rules for accessing the Internet and the penalties for Internet misuse. This is also the time to let them know that you are planning to implement monitoring tools in the network to track Internet use. Do this to protect yourself from a potential wrongful dismissal suit should you have to terminate an employee. It is also important that they understand the dangers that lurk on the Internet, and the threat those dangers pose to your company.
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Install a firewall. A firewall blocks incoming and outgoing traffic by both IP address and port number. With a firewall in place, you can keep your employees from visiting peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing sites, file transfer protocol (FTP) sites, or other sites that use protocols susceptible to hacking. By blocking incoming traffic you can protect your internal network from externally originated attacks. Check the firewall logs on a periodic basis just to look for suspicious activity, or set alerts in the firewall based on selected criteria. These alerts can be configured to notify you or your network administrator of a developing problem.
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Install a content filter. Content filters function differently than firewalls in that they allow you to deal with websites by category. That is, you can block shopping sites, movie sites, social networks and a host of other non-business categories. As with firewalls, content filters also provide logs for your periodic review and action. Adding a content filter in itself will eliminate a lot of the potential for Internet misuse.
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Walk around. Visit your staff's work area periodically to see for yourself what they are working on. While this does not require any technology, it is very effective. If your employees think that you could walk up behind them at any random time, they are more likely to stay focused on business rather than surfing the Internet at work.
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