The internet is a portal to anywhere. Employees can use the browsers on their work computer for good reasons, such as doing research for a work project or looking up customer or lead information.

They can also use it for activities that you would not consider work-appropriate, such as visiting an offensive website or watching funny animal videos on YouTube.

69% of surveyed employees admit to shopping online while at work, and if you look at just the millennial age group, that percentage jumps to 81%.

When employees use the internet at work for personal use it can cut into productivity, but also leave your network security open to risks. Landing on a sketchy website can cause an injection of malware into the work device being used, and this could quickly spread to your entire network.

Threats like ransomware, adware, spyware, viruses, and more can easily be unleashed by an unsuspecting employee that’s visiting websites they should not be while at work.

How do you control the websites employees visit when you can’t exactly be standing behind each one all the time? Through web filtering.

Benefits of Web Filtering

Web filtering allows you to set up specific sites that your network will not allow. If a user tries to visit a site that is in a blocked category, they would be met with a message letting them know that the site was blocked.

Using web filtering has multiple advantages for your organization.

Improves Employee Productivity

If employees are doing their holiday shopping when they should be working, that eats into company productivity. While you can tell employees visiting non-work-related websites is frowned upon, in many cases, they’re going to do it anyway.

Web filtering gives you a way to ensure non-work-appropriate sites are blocked, which improves company efficiency.

Improves Network Security

Being able to block potential phishing sites and sites known to be heavily populated with adware (like pornographic sites) improves your overall network security.

Makes Administration Oversight Easier

You don’t have to look through tons of internet usage reports to try to see how many employees are wasting time on the internet. Instead, you can simply filter out the sites you see as a problem, blocking anyone on your network from visiting them. This takes much less administrative time and is a more automated solution.

Optimizes the Allocation of Network Resources

When someone decides that no one is looking and they can stream a show from their computer, that streaming is taking up your company’s bandwidth. Company resources get used when employees use the internet at work for personal use, which could actually cause cloud-based work applications to lag and freeze up.

Web filtering ensures that this doesn’t happen.

What Categories Should We Filter For?

Web filtering is completely customizable according to your company’s needs.

Here are some of the categories that BrainStomp filters for to give you a few ideas.

Adult

Get Help Setting Up Web Filtering on Your Network

BrainStomp can help your business put an affordable web filtering solution in place and get you set up with the best filtering categories for your needs.

Schedule a free consultation today! Call 260-918-3548 or reach out online.

BrainStomp, Inc.

BrainStomp, Inc.

Inside the Brain of a Geek

BrainStomp, Inc.

4 Reasons To Use Content Filtering to Restrict Access to Non-Work-Related Sites

Benefits of Web Filtering

Improves Employee Productivity

Improves Network Security

Makes Administration Oversight Easier

Optimizes the Allocation of Network Resources

What Categories Should We Filter For?

Get Help Setting Up Web Filtering on Your Network

BrainStomp, Inc.