5 Ways Web Filtering Helps Your Business
Monday, December 14, 2020, 6:00 AM | Leave Comment
No matter the industry your company belongs to, digital outlets have become essential for business success.
Customers use the internet every day to make purchases and communicate with brands, and your business needs to be there to respond, help, and engage.
However, as the need for building a web presence grows, so do the risks of using online channels to communicate.
Employees might not be following security protocols when exchanging data, while visiting unauthorized sites can also jeopardize your security.
Enter: web filtering, as a solution that helps companies combine increased cybersecurity and boost productivity among their employees. Although the risks of internet communication and data exchanges will always exist, your business needs to take every possible precaution. How you keep your communication channels safe will make all the difference in building your reputation in your industry and in the eyes of your target demographic.
Here are the five key ways in which this comprehensive solution helps your business flourish online.
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Eliminating distractions online
Time management and productivity cannot exist without one another. If your employees are prone to procrastination or idle social media scrolling, chances are that they are wasting hours of their time at the office doing absolutely nothing productive. Research has shown that those who waste the most time tend to waste about three hours every day, which can be a costly loss for your business down the line.
Social networks represent one of the greatest sources of distractions for your employees. However, since you cannot really rely on them to completely change their habits overnight, you can limit their access to sites that lead to such wasteful behavior.
Web filtering helps you prevent access to social networks from your office, so that your employees cannot spend time on their private profiles during office hours. Add to that, make sure that your employees know how to use your corporate social accounts, and what constitutes safe online behavior. The combination of guidelines and web filtering can make all the difference for your team’s productivity.
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Elevating your business security
Cybersecurity is one of the greatest priorities for all modern-day companies, and web filtering greatly contributes to the overall security of your organization. If your business network isn’t secure to begin with, then anything your employees do online can be a cybersecurity risk and a potential legal liability. By preventing malware and exploit kits from reaching your network, web filtering enhances your computer network security and keeps cyber threats at bay.
Since traditional antimalware antivirus software can be slow to respond to such threats, web filtering is much more reliable in recognizing malicious software and other vulnerabilities even from legitimate websites. Hackers are becoming more versed every day, so the need for advanced filtering solutions is all the greater the more you work with sensitive customer information.
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Reducing legal liability
Hackers are one form of online threats that are treated as the most common, since they are external and intentionally malicious by nature. However, human error is actually the greatest source of risk and vulnerability for your business.
Perhaps not intentionally, but your employees might visit unsafe websites, illegally even, download copyright material, or share sensitive information accidentally. All of those actions put your business at risk from lawsuits, legal fees, and of course, they can jeopardize your hard-earned reputation.
By preventing your employees from visiting unauthorized websites and from participating in illegal activities of any kind with the help of web filtering, you invest in the legal protection of your business, too. Paired with proper end-to-end encryption, web filtering also allows your employees to communicate about sensitive customer topics safely and never leak any of the data.
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Preserving your bottom line
Although certain losses from cyber attacks and losing sensitive data can be genuinely incalculable, math does help you understand other types of losses. For example, the pure financial loss of a security breach can cost you millions of dollars. From damage control, reputation management, covering legal fees, restoring customer data, to overhauling your entire cybersecurity infrastructure, recovering from a cyberattack can be a lengthy and expensive process.
Preventing one, however, comes at a much more manageable expense, especially if you combine a handful of effective solutions for your own business model. Web filtering is nowadays considered a necessity, not just an option. By investing in prevention through web filtering, you effectively prevent your business from losing millions down the road.
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Limiting access to inappropriate content
Even when your teams use only software that is completely free of vulnerabilities and exploit kits and know how to spot phishing scams, do they always abide by your policy on safe online behavior? For example, some employees might visit gaming, gambling, pornographic sites, or reach any other kind of inappropriate content through your business network. That is, if you’re not implementing web filtering as part of your prevention strategy.
You can customize your web filters to recognize and prevent access to not-suitable-for-work content sites (NSFW) and put your own mind at ease. These filters also enable you to monitor employee activity so that you can notice if someone tries to do just that – and perhaps added education is a good idea to help your teams understand what your expectations are.
Your business’s cybersecurity as well as productivity are your top priorities, so investing in the most innovative solutions to reduce risk and prevent breaches is essential. Educate your employees on best practices when it comes to safe online behaviors and data exchanges, and you’ll elevate your standards even further. Web filtering will certainly allow your business to stay safe, your teams to stay focused, and ultimately to preserve your reputation for years on end.
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