In our previous article we analysed the risks and implications involved for businesses when there are no security or restriction policies and systems in place to stop usersdistributing illegal content (torrents). We also spoke about unauthorized access to company systems, sharing sensitive company information and more. This article talks about how specialized systems such as GFI’s WebMonitor are capable of helping businesses stop torrent applications accessing the internet, control the websites users access, blockremote control software (Teamviewer, Remote Desktop, Ammy Admin etc) and put a stop to users wasting bandwidth, time and company money while at work.
GFI’s WebMonitor is more than just an application. It can help IT departments design and enforce internet security policies by blocking or allowing specific applications and services accessing the internet.
GFI WebMonitor is also capable of providing detailed reports of users’ web activity – a useful feature that ensure users are not accessing online resources they shouldn’t, and provide the business with the ability to check users’ activities in case of an attack, malware or security incident.
GFI WebMonitor is not a new product - it carries over a decade of development and has served millions of users since its introduction into the IT market. With awards from popular IT security magazines, Security Experts, IT websites and more, it’s the preferred solution when it comes to a complete web filtering and security monitoring solution.
Blocking Unwanted Applications: Application Control – Not Port Control
Senior IT Managers, engineers and administrators surely remember the days where controlling TCP/UDP ports at the Firewall level was enough to block or provide applications access to the internet. For some years now, this is no longer a valid way of application control, as most ‘unwanted’ applications can smartly use common ports such as HTTP (80) or HTTPS (443) to circumvent security policies, passing inspection and freely accessing the internet.
In order to effectively block unwanted applications, businesses must realize that it is necessary to have a security Gateway device that can correctly identify the applications requesting access to the internet, regardless the port they are trying to use – aka Application Control.
Application Control is a sophisticated technique that requires upper layer (OSI Model) inspection of data packets as they flow through the gateway or proxy, e.g. GFI WebMonitor. The gateway/proxy executes deep packet level inspection to identify the application requesting access to the internet.
In order to correctly identify the application the gateway must be aware of it, which means it has to be listed in its local database.