It is estimated that the average employee spends 65% of his Internet time on non-work related activity. Most of it is devoted to social networks, followed by online games, instant messaging, videos and movies and other entertainment oriented activities. As the Internet is most rampantly used at the office, it is not difficult to imagine how much of your employees time is spent actually working. You may think that your existing firewalls are preventing your employees from engaging in such nefarious activities, but then you would be wrong. The online world has changed and applications now rule the roost. Unfortunately most existing firewalls cannot decipher between good and bad applications. Firewalls from Sonicwall stand out as an exception offering excellent features to filter out the unwanted applications.
Pressure on Bandwidth
The first visible impact of applications being downloaded on the network is the drop in bandwidth speed. This slows down the performance of necessary and required applications and can severely impact the productivity of your employees. An application intelligent firewall is able to understand which applications are and can either block them entirely or indicate which user is attempting to utilise them. Either way, the errant behaviour can be nipped in the bud.
Prevention of Dangerous Applications
The hazard of applications being downloaded on the network is not restricted to its demands on the bandwidth. Some can actually be dangerous in nature, designed to spy on the network and relay relevant information back to the host. Others plant viruses on the network, which can harm the data existing on the system. Consequently the risks posed by such applications are particularly high. Application intelligent firewalls can be configured to block categories of applications like gaming, chatting and so on. Their databases are constantly being updated automatically with all the latest harmful applications and as a result, protect your company from dangerous downloads.
Restricting Time Spent on Unproductive Work
The third and probably most useful advantage of application intelligent firewalls is that they encourage your employees to work productively. Since they restrict access to all distractions like social networking, online gaming and chatting, employees have nothing left to do but work on their job objectives. Further the firewall can be configured to allow certain applications within a category to be permitted. For example, if an organisation uses Google Chat for internal communication, this chat engine alone can be permitted while others remain blocked.
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