The use of social media as a marketing tool has grown exponentially over the past five years. Companies of all sizes, from mega-corporations to the smallest mom ‘n pop shop are updating to Facebook and Tweeting at a furious pace, all to generate interest and enhance their online reputations. Now, regulating this activity has become a huge concern, as business owners and managers begin to wonder if some employees might be wasting their time, or harming the company’s reputation.
At North Star, we serve a range of clients with Information Technology Solutions for Denver businesses of all sizes, designed to improve efficiency, reduce downtime, enhance communication, and control costs.
Is your company using social media to enhance your reputation, build your brand, or just keep in touch with clients and customers?
Do you know who is posting in the name of your company, or what they’re saying about you?
Are some of your employees wasting time by posting to Facebook and Twitter, when they should be “on the clock”?
Do you wonder if so much social action might harm the security of your system?
Have you put filters in place to regulate the online activity of your employees, and to protect your system from outside intrusion?
Does your business have a social media policy in place?
Social Media Examiner recently published a great blog post about the importance of creating a social media policy within your business, listing nine important steps you can take that will help you control your employees’ time, and the online reputation of your business, by creating “an effective, empowering social media policy.”
To help you accomplish this, the Denver IT support experts at North Star are available to help you with drafting a social media policy, as well as implementing an organizational web protection structure that is flexible enough to fit any business need.
“What the heck does that mean?” you ask. Well, we’ll tell you…
Managed services to protect your investment in your system, and manage employee productivity.
The Web Protection and Filtering service from North Star is built around a policy driven approach to system security. This means that each device that you turn on for Web Protection will point to a central policy; for example, who may, and may not, post to social media from their work device, ensuring full compliance with your social media policy. You’ll also be able to edit the policy and adjust settings for each device designated to follow that particular policy (or have us do it for you). This allows you to “filter” your Web Protection to a range of devices, as opposed to implementing device-level settings across the board, without regard for the needs of individuals and their devices.
Web protection and filtering from North Star will allow you to:
- Block users from visiting suspected and confirmed unsafe websites
- Apply Web Filtering to enforce internet access policies among all employees
- Set white lists and black lists to override category-based filters, where appropriate
- Optionally apply a schedule to allow employees access to non-work sites during out of office hours, or during the lunch hour
- Apply a Web Bandwidth check and be alerted when there is excessive bandwidth activity on a network
- Intelligently filter internet activity by day, category, and URL to reveal trends, spikes, and irregularities, and show or hide URL data depending on data privacy requirements
Not only does this feature protect your system, and your investment in your employees’ time, it also comes with complete, detailed reporting tools that will allow you to analyze browsing activity and demonstrate the effectiveness of web security.
This is a common sense approach to increased web security and time management of your employees. We will create effective web filtering policies that will protect your system from dangerous websites, and that place limits on non-work related browsing by your employees. You’ll also receive alerts to excessive bandwidth usage if a particular device exceeds your pre-set usage thresholds, and protection from legal liabilities, or a security breach, through the use of proactive internet access controls.
With so many people spending their entire day online, whether for work or personal reasons, regulating your employees’ online activity has never been more important. Protecting your systems, guiding your online reputation, and filtering online activities to prevent time wasting activity have all become critical issues in today’s work environment.
“The Web Protection and Filtering Service from North Star is an invaluable tool for achieving these goals.”
Find out more about this service HERE
The best way to ensure the security of your information system, and the future of your small business, is to rely on expert advice and help to protect your network. The IT experts at North Star are here to help you secure your small business network with a Free IT Security Assessment and our menu Proactive Management and Monitoring Services. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your IT service request for help with your operating system, apps, servers, VoIP system or any other IT issues you may have.
