Who's about to go crazy this March Madness?

Is it your IT administrator who needs to sort out all of the bandwidth issues? Is it your employees who want to access work-related resources on the web and cannot because of people streaming March Madness games?
The NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship, AKA “March Madness”, is a major distraction in U.S. workplaces every year. The tournament kicks off March 19, with the busiest tournament days occurring on Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22 during standard business hours (beginning at 9am ET).
It’s only natural that employees’ level of interest is high when there is so much focus on the tournament in such a short span of time. Employees who are following the tournament closely are highly likely to turn to the Internet to stay up-to-date on the latest news and scores. With so many websites available to follow the tournament, it is very common for employees to watch live streams of games, listen to audio commentaries, view game highlights on ESPN and others, search for the latest results and stories, and participate in other related activities while at work – all of which are likely to cause a significant disturbance in three ways:

Bandwidth bottlenecks

With multiple users streaming content simultaneously, the available bandwidth is easily taken up. This can have a severe impact on other applications which are dependent on the Internet, such as VoIP, CRM, email and other cloud and Internet-enabled applications. Typical streaming content consumes 10Mb of data per minute. Multiply that by a significant number of employees and you can see why a bandwidth spike creating a bottleneck is inevitable.

Productivity loss

With games held during regular business hours, many users will be following results as they happen. This major distraction could severely impact productivity over the course of the tournament.

Security problems

Hackers have always used high interest stories and trending topics as lures to infect users’ machines. March Madness is no different, and it is almost certain that cybercriminals will use the tournament to trick unsuspecting users into falling for fake websites, SEO poisoning, phishing and other malicious scams.
To manage these problems, companies need to be prepared to enforce Internet usage and web filtering best practices, including:

• Informing and educating employees about the effects associated with March Madness and giving them browsing tips that will help to address these challenges – e.g. advising users to avoid streaming live games, to be cautious of which websites they visit and to avoid clicking on links that come from an unfamiliar source.
• Implementing web security software that:
  • Automatically blocks malicious websites and ensures any websites visited are free of malware. A point to note is that an anti-virus engine alone is not enough to stop all threats – a dedicated web security engine is now also a must.
  • Allows you to define bandwidth quotas, such as limiting downloads from streaming media websites to 100Mb a day, and limiting visits to news, media and sports sites to 30 minutes per day.
  • Blocks websites which could pose legal liabilities, such as gambling websites.
• Setting up action-based alerts to anticipate problems before they develop and take the necessary action to immediately remediate issues as they rise.

Allowing employees to follow March Madness activity in the workplace can boost employee productivity, motivation and morale in the long run – but their web browsing has to be controlled. Uncontrolled usage of the Internet can result in serious issues, not just during the March Madness tournament but throughout the year. Luckily, there are advanced tools available to help IT balance the negative impacts of non-work related browsing with the need for employees to take a break, de-stress and stay motivated.

If you’re interested in a good web filtering solution, take a look at GFI WebMonitor.
You can download a free trial for 30 days. It’s worth a try!

Porn in the UK parliament - also in your office?

Porn in Parliament – Also in Your Office?

It is not the first time that online pornography has stirred controversy in the UK. The recent government’s decision to automatically opt-in home users to online adult websites was quite controversial with many people saying that it is not up to the government to decide what websites people can visit at home. It’s funny how, within only a matter of few weeks, official figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that there have been thousands of blocked attempts to access pornographic websites. The official version is that users typically end up on these websites accidentally, they come up as pop-ups from other websites and that automatically refreshing websites will generate more hits per user – a feeble attempt to wipe egg off their face.

Why does this happen?

It’s difficult to pass judgement on this issue. My view is that when someone is in their office, bored or tired after a long day, and having ‘exhausted’ their energy on Facebook, they might think that a quick peek at a ‘naughty’ website will not harm anyone? It’s also fair to say that most users probably already know that a web filtering solution is in place, and that their internet activity is monitored, so most of these are more likely than not deliberate attempts to access blocked online material. A user might come across an adult website while researching other topics, but the sheer number of attempts detailed in the statistics simply does not add up to this conclusion. When a specific website is visited, then it indicates intent to do so; however that’s up to the reader to judge.

What should you be thinking about?

Even though employees in the Houses of Parliament probably had a good idea that their online activity was monitored, it didn’t prevent them from attempting to access adult material. Moving away from the topic of porn and MPs in the UK, and looking at matters closer to home, how can you prevent something similar from happening?
What can you do to make sure that your staff spend their time more efficiently and productively? Here are a few tips:
1)      First things first, if you don’t have a web filtering and monitoring system in place, then you really should implement one – unless you want to start wondering what each employee in doing online
2)      You need a web filtering solution which will allow you to drill-down exactly into what a specific user is doing, as given by example in this short video:  Monitoring Internet activity at the office.
3)      Your web filtering should proactively advise and alert you when a user attempts to visit ‘naughty’ websites, or other illicit webpages, so that your HR department can decide whether or not to remind them of the company’s best practices on Internet usage.
4)      You should invest some time and resources discovering how much time users are spending on websites which are unrelated to their official duties.
GFI WebMonitor® is an affordable solution that allows you to address all of the above. Besides the ability to block categories of undesirable websites, it is very easy to use the Activity dashboards and reports to identify employees whose time could be better spent working for you, than searching the web for themselves. Real-time configurable alerts allow you to send emails to the appropriate people when their online behaviour merits it. Search engine query monitoring, for example, will clearly show what a user’s intentions were and the appropriate department can take the necessary actions, including education, to ensure there are no repeat offenders. GFI WebMonitor offers companies many other benefits such as added web browsing security and mitigation of bandwidth issues.

- See more at: http://www.gfi.com/blog/porn-in-parliament-also-in-your-office/#sthash.nPw0RXVx.dpuf

Android MODs and Kernel's - my experience

For a while I had been tempted to try a different mod from the stock TouchWiz for the Samsung Galaxy S3. My biggest issue was to ensure that while modding the phone, I don't lose any of my data. Thankfully, with so many apps being completely cloud-based, this risk becomes less and less as time goes by.

Anyway, after taking a huge number of different backups, I went for my first MOD. Slimbean. I must admit that after the richness (although bloated) experience of TouchWiz, Slimbean was a shock. It was so raw, and so lean that it felt overwhelmingly empty. TouchWiz maybe bloated, but there are definitely quite a lot of built features which are hard to replace. Stuff such as the large amount of gestures, features like SmartStay have their own value. Even, the blank background and the feel of a mostly Vanilla Android was a bit of a shock, and it takes getting used to.

The shock was so great from my point of view, that a few days after, I tried my second MOD - CyanogenMOD 10.1. Here, once again, I was expecting a bit of a richer experience, but once again, I was slightly disappointed with the lack of "fun" features. CyanogenMOD is very lean when compared to Touchwiz, but then again this is what I was looking for - a leaner Android experience and that was what I was getting.

After I mostly setup CM 10.1, I was fairly happy - but I ran into another issue. Android OS was eating up way more battery that I was expecting. I spent quite a few days troubleshooting what could have been causing this problem. I installed a heck of a lot of battery monitoring apps, including BetterBatteryStats and tried to understand all the partial wakelocks which were happening. I turned off syncing, location, widgets and whatever else usually causes potential battery issues. Eventually from many threads I read on XDA forums and many other places, it looked like I had run into some kind of kernel issue. Once again, I saw somewhere that flashing a kernel could be the solution to my problems. Once again, I started a search for a good kernel. Siyah looked to be quite a safe bet and I was soon flashing Siyah.

As soon as I flashed Siyah, the Android OS issue was immediately gone. And the battery life is awesome. I use the phone heavily, with multiple calls, music, playing games and various other activities, radio and Wifi on, and I still get a full day with quite some battery to spare.

Eventually, I've tweaked CM to be a very pleasant experience despite the lack of TouchWiz features. At this point, I don't miss them anymore and I've gotten used to the lean experience and moreover I quite like it. Also, CM gives me access to the latest Android versions much earlier than the Stock Samsung Android does. Here is a screenshot of my various homescreens.

So, if you are looking to take the plunge, from TouchWiz to something else, prepare yourself. Overall, it's a great experience.

Just wanted to share my thoughts my Android modding experience.