NEWS.COM -- Websense announces that the Department of Homeland Security will begin using its product to keep ICE employees off of inappropriate sites and protect its network from sites containing malicious code. Well, on one hand, that's all well and good. On the other hand, I hope there's an ICE team that has free reign of the internet to be looking out for terrorist communications no matter what website they might appear on. Also, I hope that someone tells them that Websense will just stop working, with no warning, no notice, no alert, if you go over your license limit. And then anyone can see any website or use any tool or protocol without limits until it's restarted.
It's a decent enough program, but it's got some annoying flaws, that being one of them. I would have recommended it work the other way... if you have a license for 100 computers and computer 101 connects, don't just stop working, just block computer 101 from accessing the internet entirely. Trust me, that would get people to upgrade much quicker. (Because it just kept stopping without any explanation, we figured it was broken. Even though we now know otherwise, it still sticks in our mind as being "broken" and so we dumped them and are going with a different content filtering solution here where I work.)
7 comments:
I guess I'm confused, but why would a workplace filled with adults need internet content filtering?
Are you being sarcastic?
Adults need filtering more than kids do. As a business, you need to prevent them from visiting websites... like porn or hate sites. It could violate company policy, be a time-waster, or even be the basis of a later sexual harassment claim if people had access to those sites.
The filtering software can also prevent unintentially going to a site that contains malicious code or phishing sites.
I could understand software to track what your employees do, and filtering software to prevent viruses and hacking is well and good, but the idea that grown men and women need to be restricted in what they see is ridiculous. As a boss, tell your employees not to download porn, and if they do you can fire them.
The fact this sort of thing could lead to lawsuits annoys the snot out of me. If people don't know how to act mature and responsible in the workplace, they can get jobs in Hollywood.
Fair enough. But you give people too much credit.
Not too much credit, I simply don't worry about how much porn they choose to view.
You would if it were your company. Give someone their own office and an unfiltered internet connection and their productivity can drop to zero.
Plus, it doesn't take much to get someone to drop the "hostile workplace" bomb on you and then you're in court and HR meetings and all kinds of mess. Better just to put a barrier between someone and their temptations and hope that it's an unnecessary measure.
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