Company: Skills, Inc.
Location: Washington, USA
Industry: Manufacturing
Number of employees: 350
Products in use: GFI WebMonitor™
Skills Incorporated strives to create and maintain a stable and rewarding place of work where persons with disabilities use their skills and form part of a working and business community. The company wanted to ensure that their computers and network were free of any malicious or illegal files downloaded from the Internet and at the same time prevent employees from accessing inappropriate sites during their shifts. When they upgraded to Microsoft ISA Server, the company required a product that was designed for this setup unlike the web filtering software they were using. Skills Inc. chose GFI WebMonitor which integrates seamlessly with ISA Server though a dedicated plugin.
Skills Incorporated is an organization that employs people with disabilities who are able to contribute to the community by practicing and honing their skills within the company. Mr. Ed Hammond, Sr. Systems Administrator of Skills Incorporated explained why they looked into implementing a web monitoring and web filtering solution for the organization: “First we had employees working swing and graveyard shifts and they were at times visiting inappropriate websites or playing online games instead of getting their work done. We also had problems with employees downloading games and toolbars that sometimes infected their PCs with malware and/or spyware.”
Recognizing the problems at hand, which were affecting productivity as well as the technological system of the organization, Mr. Hammond looked into solutions that would help solve the issues whilst also be suitable for their set-up.
“We had filtered the web traffic before with a light weight filter that came with a hardware firewall, but when we upgraded to the Microsoft ISA firewall we needed something more robust that we could control by category and file type.”
Mr. Hammond then decided to implement GFI WebMonitor because it “received great reviews on the ISAserver.org website and the software provided all the tools we were looking for at a completive price. We looked at many filtering options and what we liked best about GFI WebMonitor was that it is easy to configure, and the filtering had no impact on our internet speed.”
Skills Inc. had looked into web filtering software prior to installing GFI WebMonitor and although they found temporary solutions they required too much maintenance and upkeep. They needed a solution that was easy to install and configure and that worked seamlessly with ISA Server; therefore GFI WebMonitor was their ideal choice.
“We had experimented with black lists and custom filtering with ISA rules, but they were just not effective as what we needed and in the case of custom filtering with ISA, just too slow.”
“GFI WebMonitor was very simple to install and worked perfect with ISA right away without any complicated configurations. There has been no negative effect on the internet bandwidth from filtering the traffic.”
“From a technology perspective we like GFI WebMonitor because it integrates well with ISA server and updates itself on a schedule that we specify.”
The benefits of installing GFI WebMonitor were evident for Skills, Inc. because it integrated well with their existing setup and gave them the solutions that they required.
“The download violation emails make it very easy to identify who is trying to install unauthorized software on their PCs. The reports make it easy to track our internet usage and monitor employees who may be spending too much time online or using too much network bandwidth watching videos or listening to internet radio.”
Furthermore the price of the software also proved to be a beneficial factor for the organization who realized the investment of GFI WebMonitor both in terms of time and money.
“We found that buying a 3-year license gives us the best price per user/per year over any other product on the market for what GFI WebMonitor gives us. The reduction in malware and spyware infections has easily paid for the cost of GFI WebMonitor. We spend less time repairing infections and tracking internet usage.”
“GFI WebMonitor has worked so well that the money saved from not having to remove malware from user PCs has easily paid for the cost of the software. The problems that we encountered were resolved by installing GFI WebMonitor.”
For more information about GFI WebMonitor visit http://www.gfi.com/internet-monitoring-software. Download your free trial version of the software http://www.gfi.com/pages/webmon-selection-download.asp
July 2010
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