With the Thanksgiving holiday and the shopping phenomenon known as “Black Friday” behind us, the holiday shopping season is officially in full swing. Even more so this year, consumers are relying on the internet to make a great deal of holiday purchases. For many, the convenience of online shopping far outweighs facing traffic jams, elbow-to-elbow crowds, and picked over store shelves.

By Jerry Fetty, CEO, SMART I.T. Services, Inc.

With the Thanksgiving holiday and the shopping phenomenon known as “Black Friday” behind us, the holiday shopping season is officially in full swing.  Even more so this year, consumers are relying on the internet to make a great deal of holiday purchases.  For many, the convenience of online shopping far outweighs facing traffic jams, elbow-to-elbow crowds, and picked over store shelves.

But what happens when employees take online shopping to the office?  A study recently released by CareerBuilder indicates that nearly one-third of workers plan to holiday shop while online at work.  And hackers are taking note, finding many more opportunities for acquiring personal and financial information of online shoppers.

Today it is even easier for people to share gift ideas and links to the latest deals with the ascent of social media.  Sure, Facebook and Twitter are valuable networking tools and have their merits when used appropriately, but the temptation to abuse the technology stares employees in the eyes every day.  The same CareerBuilder study shows that half of workers (51 percent) spend time on their social networking pages during the workday, 11 percent of which spend one hour or more.

So what can you do to curb inappropriate internet usage and protect your network without being a Grinch?

First, a social media policy is a must.  You have probably heard me say it before, and I will continue to say it because it is so important for all businesses to have one.  Important reasons for you to look into a social media policy include to keep employees from abusing the technology and for liability purposes.  A social media policy is new territory for most businesses and it is important to find the right balance of keeping employees productive without infringing too much.

Second, a combination of solutions working together – a firewall, a virus and malware scanner, and an internet security and control solution – will help protect your network and reduce lost productivity time. There are many ways to secure your network from the internet and the plethora of choices can be daunting and confusing, but I will provide you with recommend solutions for you to consider.

A solution that is a must-have for your agency is a firewall.  A proper firewall is typically a standalone device that helps to protect your network from the internet.  I have seen a lot of agencies that think they have a proper firewall based on what their internet provider told them.  However, most so-called firewalls from internet providers are typically just routers that will support filtering capabilities. A true firewall will do what is called a “stateful packet inspection,” providing far-better security for your network.  The firewall that we currently recommend is the Cisco ASA.

Another must-have which is pretty much standard fare on any network is a properly configured network-wide virus and malware scanner. The scanner is usually a piece of software that should be installed on every workstation and server on your network.  Having just one unprotected machine on your network opens it up for all potential problems.  Our current recommendation for a network virus scanning solution is from Kaspersky labs.

The part that is missing from most networks today is an Internet monitoring and filtering solution.  Again, there are a large variety of solutions out there; some are software-based and some are device-based.  Internet monitoring and filtering solutions should be able to perform a number of tasks.  The number-one task the solution should be able to perform is logging the sites visited by your employees.  Almost as important as logging the visited sites is the ability for the solution to produce easy-to-understand reports that can be drilled-down into for details of the user's activities.  

Next, the solution should be able to filter all incoming content to watch-for and block malware and viruses.  Recognizing and blocking unwanted websites that fit into certain categories – “shopping” for example – is also a must.  In addition, the ability to allow different types of internet usage during different times of the day and for different users is helpful.  For example, you could have all Internet shopping sites blocked most of the time; however, you may let users do their shopping during lunch.

Another capability to consider, but most solutions do not have, is what we tech-guys call “packet-shaping”.  Packet-shaping basically allows you to set up rules for the types and amounts of bandwidth a user may consume during a given period.  For example, you may completely prevent audio streaming from an internet radio station.  Or, you may allow it, but limit the amount of bandwidth each employee can use for this purpose, helping to conserve your bandwidth for work-related functions.

An additional must-have for an internet security and control solution is the ability for it to perform an automatic failover.  Since these solutions are typically installed in the center of your internet bandwidth pipeline, if the device fails, it could cause your internet to be down or severely affected.  A solution with automatic failover functionality will keep your internet up-and-running if the device fails.

The solution that we currently recommend for Internet monitoring and control is a device-based solution called SMARTweb Defense. These units are relatively inexpensive when compared to the amount of lost productivity they will help prevent.  Most units that we have installed have a return on investment of less than one month.

Lastly, it is important to make sure basic things like operating system patches and antivirus definitions are up-to-date. All of these various layers working together harmoniously will help you reduce the risk of security breaches and prevent lost productivity from the abuse of online shopping at your agency.

Jerry Fetty (SMART I.T. Services) and Wayne Joubert (MAIA) will be presenting "The Benefits and Pitfalls of Using Social Media at Your Agency" at the MAIA’s Annual Convention in Grand Rapids from February 23-25, 2010.  Be sure to attend this valuable event for the latest information about managing social media at your agency.  For more information about developing a social media policy or SMARTweb Defense, please contact us at (888) 843-6385.