I agree completely. Especial with the last paragraph of what you are saying.
Running a companies network is a lot like letting children on the internet. You need
to know what is going on. Just saying NO is not enough.
You need to have a clear and enforcable policy that prohibits that behavior at work.
You need to have TOOLS that let you know when those policies are violated and you need
to enforce the policy through dicipline and expectations.
Eric
>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2/28/00 >>>
Far from raining on the parade, the faq response you reference ignores both
the technology available to solve the problem and the human resource issues
facing most companies today.
There may not be a problem in academia, but there is a very real problem in
many corporations. We've had clients who have discovered employees spending
four hours a day surfing porn on the company dime. Same thing with games
and gambling. Now with pay-for-surfing portals, companies are starting to
see employees spending hours making money
using the T-1 to surf instead of doing their jobs (see ValuePay.com,
SurfRewards.com, CashSurfers.com).
Companies that are concerned about workers spending too much time on
recreational surfing, have a right to limit how their network is used.
Companies have a legal responsibility to prevent their network from being
used to display non-work related material that may be offensive to
co-workers. Civil libertarians have a real problem with this,
unfortunately, they usually hire the same lawyers who are suing
corporations for fostering hostile environments by allowing racist, sexist
or other offensive material to be displayed in a browser or forwarded in an
e-mail....
You're right, if your solution is a low-tech block list, you won't solve
the problem. List based blocking *can't* solve the problem. There are
plenty more sites out there with pornography, gambling, or any other
non-work related content. And even the best block lists aren't keeping up
with the number or new, recreational sites being added each day.
The best solutions available today are a combination of content filtering
on the content of the pages themselves (there are several applications out
there, including ours), coupled with a clear corporate policy on
appropriate use of network resources.
The company is also better served if it is prepared to manage its
employees. Simply blocking access with a block list or an appliance doesn't
change behavior, it even presents a challenge to the more technically
inclined. But the technology exists to provide feedback to managers, and
allow them to tell employees to knock it off,... before a small problem
becomes a big problem.
Regards,
Duncan Perry
Elron Software, Inc.
---------------------- Forwarded by Duncan Perry/Elronsw on 02/28/2000
02:16 PM ---------------------------
"Eric Dencer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 02/28/2000 12:39:47 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc: (bcc: Duncan Perry/Elronsw)
Subject: Re: Preventing access to adult sites.
I hate to rain on the parade of the wonderful information. I suggest that
you all read the Firewalls-faq at http:\\www.faqs.org/faqs/firewalls-faq
Specifically section 3.12
If your employee want to get to those sites, they will activly find a way
to circumvent any filtering or blocking that you implement.
This is not a technology issue, more like a values issue.
Eric
>>> "Michael Enk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2/28/00 >>>
Hi all,
I want to prevent my internal users in accessing different sites,
especially
the adult sites like playboy and so on. My problem is that I do not want to
look through the hole internet for this kind of sites. Does anybody know if
a list exists containing information about all this sites. I could then add
the sites into my host black list.
Best regards,
Michael Enk
IT Project Manager
GN Nettest A/S
Kirkebjerg All
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