Internet Usage Monitoring

Presented by Ian Holt

According to Computerworld, Internet Monitoring has become a bigger part of IT support professional's job responsibilities. The magazine reports of a typical company spending one full day per week reviewing web logs to see if there's any activity that needs to be exposed or discussed.

A comprehensive reporting module is a must-have with any employee Internet management solution. The reporting modules purpose is to synthesize raw data and turn it into information that can be easily understood and used by managers to manage their employees. The amount of time and labor cost a user spends at sports related Web sites is an example of an informative report.

The number of violations to your organizations Internet Acceptable Use Policy is another. Reports should provide information graphically and numerically and should be able to be scheduled to be run and distributed automatically. Advanced features like report customization and distributed reporting can also be beneficial.

The last thing you want is for your IT support staff to babysit an employee Internet control system and become the Internet police. Your employee Internet monitoring solution should be easy to configure, automatically maintain its list of Web Filters, update itself with new program patches and automatically generate and distribute reports to managers and key stakeholders.