Controlling internet access is a common practice in companies and is increasingly important and necessary. Two main points must be observed when managing internet use in corporate environments: data security and team productivity!
In the vast majority of incidents or security breaches, the gateway to attacks or virus installation are users who are unable to identify possible risks and end up clicking on fake email messages or malicious links on the internet.
See an example in practice:
The most common types of incidents currently are:
- Data hijacking, also known as Ransomware ;
- Financial fraud, such as changing bills;
- Phishing or theft of confidential data from fake websites;
- Installation of viruses and compromise of network and equipment.
In relation to team productivity, managers need to avoid wasting time or lack of focus on the part of employees with activities on the internet that are personal or unrelated to work. Unfortunately, this is a common practice in companies, research shows that employees spend only 43% of their working week on functions they were hired to do.
Improper use of the internet by employees can greatly compromise the company's productivity. This waste of time can occur in countless ways, accessing social networks such as Facebook or Instagram, accessing personal email, communication services such as WhatsApp or Telegram, entertainment sites, shopping, sports, among others. According to research, workers are interrupted an average of 14 times a day because of these internet tools and with each interruption the employee takes an average of 20 minutes to return to the original task.
Download the infographic that illustrates employee productivity on the internet.
But how do you define the internet usage policy on your company’s network? The objective of this article is to help answer this question.
What to block in internet access control?
To define which sites and services should be blocked or allowed on the company's internet, it is essential to start with a detailed analysis of employees' activities. Understanding which content is essential for work and which contributes to wasted time helps to create an efficient access policy. Using internet reports is an essential practice to visualize browsing patterns and adjust permissions according to the company's needs.
When creating access rules, two approaches are common: keep all sites open, blocking only unwanted ones, or block everything and only release sites necessary for activities. The decision depends on your company profile and team dynamics. Flexibility in the rules can be an advantage, allowing adjustments according to sectors or work schedules.
Analyzing internet reports before setting restrictions is crucial to identify the most accessed sites and understand browsing habits. This allows you to implement intelligent filters that increase productivity and prevent access to irrelevant or potentially dangerous content. With detailed reporting, you can continually adjust policies, ensuring your team stays focused on the most important tasks.
When defining access policy, balance is essential. Some exceptions can be made, such as allowing the Human Resources sector to access social networks for recruitment, or allowing the use of entertainment websites during non-working hours. Customizing rules and using web reports to monitor and adjust these policies are key to maintaining productivity and safety in the workplace.
But, how can I make internet use safe and improve network usage in my company with internet access control?
See the main types of content that should be evaluated to define a good internet access control policy
Harmful and malicious websites
The internet is full of threats and websites that can cause security problems for your company .
A very common practice by criminals is sending spam with links to malicious websites that can install viruses and malware on computers. When accessing a harmful website, it installs a malicious program without the user realizing it, as a result of which the equipment and network may be compromised. This is where most attacks occur, such as Ransomware (data hijacking) and financial fraud.
See more on this subject in the article Phishing: how to protect yourself and not fall for the scam .
Therefore, it is highly recommended that browsing on your company's network is protected and blocks any type of harmful website.
The main types of harmful websites can be divided into the following categories:
- Access anonymizers
- Hacking
- Keyloggers
- Malware and spyware
- Phishing and online fraud
In addition to harmful websites used specifically for digital crimes, other types of content can also link to malicious websites or pose risks. Some that we can highlight are: pornography and pedophilia, gambling and betting, violence and file download sites.
Likewise, it is recommended that websites related to these types of content have access restrictions in your company. Because the vast majority of users are unable to identify potential risks and can easily access a page or take some action that opens the door to some type of information security incident.
It is also essential to educate users about the dangers that the internet poses and how to identify risks . Simple actions can often avoid major problems, check out some tips to protect your company from virtual attacks .
Social media
By far, access to social media is the factor that most contributes to a lack of focus and wasted time at work. See the numbers from the Digital in 2024 :
- Brazilians spend an average of 9h13 daily on social media;
- In the last 12 months, new users grew by 1.8%, with 97 million new users, bringing the global total to 5.35 billion at the beginning of 2024.
Social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, are rich sources of information and entertainment, but they can become a major distraction in the workplace. Frequent access to these platforms can compromise focus and productivity, distracting employees from their main tasks. To avoid this negative impact, the use of internet reports is an essential tool, allowing managers to monitor browsing habits and identify where the biggest distractions occur.
An effective solution is not necessarily to ban the use of social networks, but to establish a balanced access policy. Allow use at specific times, such as during breaks or moments of rest, ensuring that employees can disconnect without compromising performance. Continuous analysis of internet reports also allows you to flexibly adjust rules, ensuring focus on work while keeping team morale and well-being high.
Instant communicators
Communication systems, such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Messenger, have become an essential part of our daily lives, allowing direct conversations with a large number of people in a practical and efficient way. However, when used in the workplace, these applications can become major productivity villains, generating constant and prolonged distractions.
Some negatives of using these communicators at work include:
- Lengthy conversations : Interactions can go on beyond what is necessary, especially when they involve personal matters or matters outside of a professional context.
- Expectation of quick responses : The culture of immediate responses can create an environment of pressure and anxiety, hindering focus on priority tasks.
- Waste of time : Frequent interruptions divert attention, causing employees to waste valuable time and take longer to return to their activities.
- Drop in quality of work : Fragmented attention and constant return to messages can reduce the quality of deliveries and the team's overall performance.
However, despite the challenges, these systems also offer significant benefits when used strategically:
- Agility in communication : WhatsApp and Telegram can speed up internal and external communication, facilitating the sharing of important information between teams and customers.
- Quick problem resolution : With instant communication, problems or queries can be resolved quickly, reducing wait times for responses and maintaining continuous workflow.
- Integration between remote teams : For companies that have employees in different locations, these applications allow you to keep the team connected, promoting real-time collaboration.
- Customer service support : Tools like Telegram can be used as official communication channels with customers, offering agile and practical service.
To balance the negative and positive points, it is essential that the manager understands the team's needs and establishes clear usage policies. For example, Telegram can be defined as the official communication channel with customers and employees, while other services, such as WhatsApp, can be blocked to avoid personal distractions. Furthermore, controlled use at specific times can help reduce the negative impact of these communicators, without losing the benefits of efficient communication.
With this approach, it is possible to maximize gains in productivity and communication, while minimizing distractions in the workplace.
Personal email
Accessing emails during working hours is a common practice among professionals, but it can directly affect the team's productivity. Often, this distraction leads to frequent interruptions and a decrease in focus on core activities. To overcome this problem, an effective strategy is to use internet reports to monitor personal email usage and implement blocks during working hours, ensuring that employees can focus on their professional tasks.
However, it is essential to balance productivity and well-being. By granting access to personal emails at specific times, such as during breaks or scheduled breaks, your team can resolve personal issues without compromising work performance. Regular analysis of internet reports also allows you to adjust these policies on an ongoing basis, promoting a more efficient and focused work environment, without compromising employee satisfaction.
Pornography, violence, drugs and alcoholic beverages
You can imagine that inappropriate content, such as pornography, violence or other sensitive topics, will not be accessed by your employees. However, reality can be surprising, as these attacks can occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently. Therefore, it is crucial to implement complete blocks for this type of content in the workplace, ensuring not only the company's security, but also the professionalism of the team. Furthermore, the use of internet reports becomes essential to monitor and identify any attempts to access inappropriate websites, offering the manager a clear view of the team's online behavior.
With the constant analysis of internet reports , it is possible to apply corrective actions when necessary. In cases of infractions, notifying the employee and offering clear guidance on behavioral expectations is an important step. If there is a recurrence, more severe measures, such as formal warnings or even penalties, can be implemented to reinforce company standards.
These actions help to promote an organizational culture based on responsibility, ethics and focus, strengthening the work environment. By ensuring that the team understands expectations and technological tools are used appropriately, the company creates a safe and productive space, reinforcing its image of seriousness and commitment both internally and in the market.
Audio and video streaming
Streaming services such as YouTube and Spotify are also among the biggest causes of loss of concentration during work and also contribute a lot to the slowness of the internet, as they consume a lot of network resources.
Considering this, it is recommended that there be some type of restricted control for these sites, especially at times or periods of greater internet use, such as the beginning of shifts and days of the month that concentrate the execution of important company activities, such as sending guides. of taxes in an accounting office , for example.
File storage and software download
These sites also contribute to damaging internet performance, as storage services are often used to transfer large files. Furthermore, software download sites may offer malicious files that install unwanted programs on computers.
To avoid risks, it is also recommended to control these sites by blocking them, allowing them to be released only in cases where they are necessary for company activities, such as exchanging heavy files with clients, such as the need for an advertising agency, photographic studio or a print shop.
Games and bets
Another type of content that you might think your employees don't access during work, but accessing gaming sites may be more frequent than you think, especially from your employees' smartphones.
As this type of content will rarely be related to your company's activities, it is recommended to block access without any type of release by time or sector, mainly because this habit can become an addiction and greatly harm the team's performance.
Online shopping
In our reports on the use of the internet in companies, we identified that e-commerce sites and making purchases on the internet are among the activities most carried out by professionals in the workplace.
As these types of websites in the vast majority of cases are not related to work, it may be a good practice to restrict access to prevent professionals from wasting a lot of time searching for items of personal interest to purchase.
Job
These are sites that basically offer job opportunities for professionals.
Unless it is to promote opportunities for your company, it makes a lot of sense to create navigation restrictions for this type of content.
Tip: internet access control solution , you can predict when an employee is dissatisfied with their current job based on access to websites in that category.
Entertainment
Entertainment sites can include different types of content, such as Home and Garden, Sports, Movies and Soap Operas, Government and Politics, Fashion and Beauty, Religion and Esotericism, Health and Medicine, and Travel and Tourism. It is common for these topics to arouse the interest of employees in the workplace, such as looking for news about their favorite football team or following fashion trends. However, accessing these sites can divert the focus from professional activities.
It is important to highlight that, in some cases, there are exceptions that can be considered. For example, blocking social networks may be a good practice, but releasing LinkedIn may be essential for the Human Resources sector that uses the platform for recruitment. Likewise, the use of instant communicators can be controlled, keeping WhatsApp free for the sales team when serving customers.
The definition of an efficient access policy must always seek balance and common sense. Certain content can be released during breaks and rest times, allowing employees to relax. This not only avoids excess distractions, but also helps employees return to work more focused and productive after these breaks.
Internet access control
To implement internet access control in your company, there are different alternatives, such as traditional Linux proxy solutions provided by specialized companies, which require greater investment in servers, specialized labor and constant maintenance.
Other options are Dell SonicWall , Fortinet FortiGate and similar, or more modern solutions that use cloud resources and are more affordable, easy to implement and manage. This type of service is mainly recommended for small and medium-sized companies, good options are OpenDNS , DNSFilter or Lumiun .
To choose the best option for managing internet access, it is important to clearly define your company's needs and compare the costs, characteristics and benefits of each of the existing solutions.
Why Lumiun?
There are different solutions available on the market for managing and controlling internet access. However, the vast majority require high investment, involvement of specialized technical professionals and require constant maintenance, updates and frequent support. This makes these solutions expensive and often unfeasible, especially for small and medium-sized companies.
With the purpose of filling this gap in the market and offering an accessible and simplified solution to small and medium-sized companies, there is Lumiun . Lumiun is a Brazilian company, which has a cloud-based service and with a strong difference in the ease of implementation and management of the system.
See some of Lumiun’s main features and advantages:
- Fast and simplified installation and configuration without the need for technical knowledge
- No need to purchase new equipment or servers
- No need to worry about maintenance or software updates
- No cost for specialized professionals to implement or maintain the software
- Cloud management, accessible via the internet on any platform or device
- Support in Portuguese via phone, email and chat
In conjunction with ease of management, the service has features that allow complete management and control of internet access in companies.
With Lumiun it is possible to implement different internet access policies, for example, to block inappropriate content such as pornography or social networks, simply click the button for the desired category.
The rules can be flexible, depending on schedules. Furthermore, the system generates analytical reports on network usage, allowing the manager to make assertive decisions to optimize the company's security and productivity on the internet.
Lumiun DNS :
- Internet Access Control : Allows you to block unwanted and inappropriate websites based on categories (such as social networks, games, entertainment, etc.), helping you maintain productivity and security.
- Simplified Management : Managing internet access can be done easily, without the need for advanced technical knowledge. The system is configured in the cloud, which facilitates implementation and management.
- Detailed Real-Time Reports : Offers real-time internet access reports, allowing managers to monitor employees' browsing and identify possible problems or excesses.
- Blocking Inappropriate Content : Uses filters to automatically block access to inappropriate content, such as pornography, violence, gambling, among others, promoting a safe work environment.
- SafeSearch Enabled : Automatically removes explicit results in search engines such as Google, Bing and YouTube, ensuring safer browsing.
- Traffic Monitoring : Monitors internet traffic by devices and users, providing a detailed view of network consumption and use.
Lumiun Box :
- Easy control of key applications
- Blocking access to specific websites
- Access control by categories and types of content
- Real-time access report
- Remove explicit content from Google, Bing and Youtube results using SafeSearch
- Traffic monitoring by network equipment and users
- Limiting traffic consumption by groups of equipment or users
- Integrated management of multiple networks
- Business VPN to facilitate access for external users
If you want to know more about Lumiun's solutions, talk to a consultant or schedule a demonstration .
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