Internet Usage Reporting That Makes Sense - Finally!
Keeping an eye on what staff are doing on the Internet is something that many organisations want to do. There are multiple reasons for monitoring what sites people are visiting and for how long, such as cybersecurity, productivity, and staff protection from damaging content.
Most organisations will have web content-blocking software in place that controls who can visit specific websites. These are often very blunt instruments, such as blocking access to YouTube completely. Which can be a problem as many webinar recordings that people need to watch will be hosted there. For sites that are not blocked but may be used excessively by some staff, it can be a time-consuming process if a manager wants to know the usage statistics for their team. Often it requires an IT professional to run a report against log files to extract the information for the manager who needs it. This takes time that staff in most IT departments or managed service providers (MSPs) would rather spend on other activities.
A better solution is to allow access to websites that are not immediately dangerous or have illegal content, then provide managers with a way to see which sites their staff are browsing and for how long. This is precisely what Fastvue Reporter delivers across industry-leading Internet gateway solutions (see next section). It makes the reporting of Internet usage understandable for all non-technical managers, while also removing the burden of generating reports from the IT team. By doing this, Fastvue Reporter makes Internet use monitoring another part of staff management rather than an IT function. Which, after a few decades of Internet use, is how it should be.
Renaissance partners with Fastvue to make their reporting solutions available to MSPs and IT departments operating in the Irish market. Contact us today to see how Fastvue can take some of the load from IT teams and empower managers to understand better how their staff are using the Internet. Read on for a high-level overview of the Fastvue products.
Fastvue - Your Internet Usage Statistics Expert
Fastvue have products that distil the expertise gained from years of log analysis and reporting to make the information that can be obtained available to anyone who needs it.
Internet access is often controlled in organisations by using a gateway device from one of a selection of companies. Fastvue Reporter is available in versions that know how they log Internet activity, and provides reporting tools that make the information available in understandable human terms. Fastvue Reporter is available for Internet gateways from:
- SonicWall
- Fortinet
- Palo Alto Networks
- Barracuda
- ContentKeeper
- Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway
These are the prominent players in this area, and Fastvue has additional vendor-specific versions to come. All reports can be tailored and automated to be run and delivered to specific recipients on a schedule that suits them.
Tailored Reporting and Management
The built-in reporting tools on most Internet gateways only provide the raw data on what external sites are visited. On the modern Internet this raw data is often opaque. For example, rather than listing real site names, they will show the name of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that most popular sites employ to deliver content. If you are not an expert in this area, most of these CDN names will be meaningless.
In addition, most websites load content from multiple third-party sites when loaded. These additional traffic destinations get included alongside the information about the main page visited and often drown out what pages people are visiting.
Fastvue Reporter has the knowledge to suppress this information that most managers do not need when looking at web usage stats. Instead of a garbled mess of irrelevant data, Fastvue Reporter will list the actual sites visited and how long they stayed. Presenting objective information for humans rather than log information for computers.
In addition to the intuitive reporting, Fastvue Reporter also provides an easy to use interface to allow non-technical managers to control the allow and block lists built into Internet gateways. So if a Manager wants to block Twitter or Reddit, they can do that by dragging them into the blocked list for their staff. The authorisation is integrated with Active Directory accounts to allow for granular control.
IT teams can still control the blocking of known sites that are dangerous from Malware and other cybersecurity perspectives. Managers will not be able to allow their staff access to hazardous sites by overriding IT controls. But managers will be able to control access within the permitted lists that IT or MSPs have made available.
Taking a Deeper Dive
While Fastvue Reporter is the best option for providing reporting and management functions to non-technical users, there is also a case for making the general management of Internet usage logs easier for technical users. This is what Fastvue WebSpy does.
With support for over 100 log file formats, WebSpy allows the intuitive reporting and information display built into Fastvue Reporter to be extended to almost any service on a network that records interactions in a log file. IT Teams can also automate WebSpy reports like they can in Fastvue Reporter.
Find Out More
Fastvue have the reporting solutions to put information on Internet usage into the hands of those that need it, without placing a burden on the IT function in an organisation. Contact us today to find out more.