Strict Web Filtering - Good Security or Cause for Lynch Mob?
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Normally When I put an a webfilter I put it pretty strict and then start to open it up as needed. I'm using SOPHOS UTM at home now and I like it pretty well.
Most businesses aren't as strict about social networking sites anymore and want facebook, twitter, etc open for everyone.
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Not all, but some are going with a more Business need approach. Not everyone needs access to Facebook,.. HR / PR department does,.. to promote the business and to 'investigate' rumors of bad employees.
Generally locking everything down, and then forcing groups or users to specifically give a business need why the need access to a site or group type. There are some companies that view using Facebook - not company related - is theft of company resources.. the data rx/tx and the time lost.
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My philosophy is that if you tell someone that they can't do something, it will instantly make everyone, even people who didn't care before, want to do it. Tell everyone no access to Facebook, 2% will not care, the 70% who will get upset rightfully will get upset, and the other 28% will follow suit. It's mob mentality.
Tell people they are free to check Facebook during downtime or their lunch period and that as long as it doesn't affect productivity, you don't care, and life will be good. Sure, you'll get the few bad eggs who always spoil it for the rest of the people, but those are the people who get laid off anyways. In general, I've found people are pretty good about knowing what needs to get done and getting it done. Some are more proactive than others, but unless there is some legal security reason for doing it, I wouldn't lock down Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now Pandora, Spotify, etc can cause bandwidth issues, but a good QoS can solve that easily too.
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@g.jacobse said:
here are some companies that view using Facebook - not company related - is theft of company resources.. the data rx/tx and the time lost.
Very few companies are doing this anymore with the work life separation become next to nothing. And you having to do work and worry about your job off the clock at home very few companies care about you using work time to take a call, check email, facebook etc. as long as it does not become a problem.
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@g.jacobse said:
Generally locking everything down, and then forcing groups or users to specifically give a business need why the need access to a site or group type.
That's an HR issue not an IT issue and should be left to them and management to decide who get's access to what.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@g.jacobse said:
here are some companies that view using Facebook - not company related - is theft of company resources.. the data rx/tx and the time lost.
Very few companies are doing this anymore with the work life separation become next to nothing. And you having to do work and worry about your job off the clock at home very few companies care about you using work time to take a call, check email, facebook etc. as long as it does not become a problem.
Exactly. Everything in this world is about ratios/proportions. Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't. Many companies make this into a huge deal, when in reality, my theory is the micro-breaks provided by Facebook, Twitter, etc taken by employees is a sign of good time-management skills and knowing how to make yourself more productive. It's only an issue if it goes from being a source of a micro-break to a deterrent to getting work done, etc. But those are the people who don't manage themselves well anyways.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@g.jacobse said:
Generally locking everything down, and then forcing groups or users to specifically give a business need why the need access to a site or group type.
That's an HR issue not an IT issue and should be left to them and management to decide who get's access to what.
Also agreed. IT doesn't set the policy. We just put the tech side into effect to enforce whatever is handed down to us...
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@thecreativeone91 said:
That's an HR issue not an IT issue and should be left to them and management to decide who get's access to what.
HR issue, yes. But it is IT's job to implement. In order to implement there needs to be a process that hopefully HR and/or upper management worked with the IT department to create so that IT can apply the rules as decided upon.
Nothing is ever an issue for only one portion of a company. that type of silo mentality leads to a whole suite of problems.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
That's an HR issue not an IT issue and should be left to them and management to decide who get's access to what.
HR issue, yes. But it is IT's job to implement. In order to implement there needs to be a process that hopefully HR and/or upper management worked with the IT department to create so that IT can apply the rules as decided upon.
Nothing is ever an issue for only one portion of a company. that type of silo mentality leads to a whole suite of problems.
Yes. We implement the policy management sets. But we have no say in the policy nor should we care. We are just there to facilitate what the company needs.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
That's an HR issue not an IT issue and should be left to them and management to decide who get's access to what.
HR issue, yes. But it is IT's job to implement. In order to implement there needs to be a process that hopefully HR and/or upper management worked with the IT department to create so that IT can apply the rules as decided upon.
Nothing is ever an issue for only one portion of a company. that type of silo mentality leads to a whole suite of problems.
I get where you're coming from Jared, but I still have to say that @thecreativeone91 is right. While we have to determine if what they want is even feasibly possible, which we all know many times what they want isn't reasonably possible, HR will often have guidelines they say must be met. Departments X, Y and Z can have this and not that. A, B and C can't that this and can that. We just do the backend stuff. We can tell them what's doable and not from a tech side, but as far as the actual policy, we wouldn't have any say in that.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
This is only theft is the company does not allow you to do this. Many companies encourage employees to socialize some with their co-workers during working hours when there is down time.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
This is only theft is the company does not allow you to do this. Many companies encourage employees to socialize some with their co-workers during working hours when there is down time.
I agree that some companies do. Some do not.
Many, is debatable.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
See, you have a very strict and black/white definition of how people should work. This is what is wrong with most businesses. They objectify how time is spent, not the results produced. Sure, someone might spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week working diligently and only taking their scheduled breaks, but maybe they're moving slower than they could. Maybe they must constantly refocus and therefore, even though they work non-stop, their quality suffers.
People should be judged by the results they deliver, not how they obtain said results. If I can do my job in 6 hours a day to a very high standard, and it takes someone else the full 8, why should I have to be "working" the other 2? If you're hourly, that is one thing. However, if you're salary, this is totally backwards. Even hourly, if you're in a call center where you are waiting for phone calls or cases to come in, you are still working.
Those micro-breaks to check Facebook are not stealing, their QA. Sure, MAYBE less work gets done, but I would dare say the work that gets done is better quality.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
This is only theft is the company does not allow you to do this. Many companies encourage employees to socialize some with their co-workers during working hours when there is down time.
I agree that some companies do. Some do not.
Many, is debatable.
Most of the companies I've worked for, including Intel Security, have actually told us that when no calls are coming in, we are welcome to do basically whatever we wanted, within reason (no pr0n or the like at work obviously). However, Facebook, personal projects, whatever were welcome. You just had to be ready to work at the moment's notice, aka when the phone rang. They understood that forcing someone to try and be super-diligent all day every day actually achieves the completely opposite effect.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
See, you have a very strict and black/white definition of how people should work. This is what is wrong with most businesses. They objectify how time is spent, not the results produced. Sure, someone might spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week working diligently and only taking their scheduled breaks, but maybe they're moving slower than they could. Maybe they must constantly refocus and therefore, even though they work non-stop, their quality suffers.
People should be judged by the results they deliver, not how they obtain said results. If I can do my job in 6 hours a day to a very high standard, and it takes someone else the full 8, why should I have to be "working" the other 2? If you're hourly, that is one thing. However, if you're salary, this is totally backwards. Even hourly, if you're in a call center where you are waiting for phone calls or cases to come in, you are still working.
Those micro-breaks to check Facebook are not stealing, their QA. Sure, MAYBE less work gets done, but I would dare say the work that gets done is better quality.
No, you are seeing something you do not like and putting your own crap on top.
I have not once stated that I see any part of this conversation any one way. I have clearly stated facts.That is all you.
Edit: Just to clarify, anyone who actually reads my postings on Mangolassi should have a solid idea of my work life, and by inference from that, my opinion on this type of thing.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
See, you have a very strict and black/white definition of how people should work. This is what is wrong with most businesses. They objectify how time is spent, not the results produced. Sure, someone might spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week working diligently and only taking their scheduled breaks, but maybe they're moving slower than they could. Maybe they must constantly refocus and therefore, even though they work non-stop, their quality suffers.
People should be judged by the results they deliver, not how they obtain said results. If I can do my job in 6 hours a day to a very high standard, and it takes someone else the full 8, why should I have to be "working" the other 2? If you're hourly, that is one thing. However, if you're salary, this is totally backwards. Even hourly, if you're in a call center where you are waiting for phone calls or cases to come in, you are still working.
Those micro-breaks to check Facebook are not stealing, their QA. Sure, MAYBE less work gets done, but I would dare say the work that gets done is better quality.
No, you are seeing something you do not like and putting your own crap on top.
I have not once stated that I see any part of this conversation any one way. I have clearly stated facts.That is all you.
I have my own perspective on things, true. I don't deny that. However, from what I've seen of companies that try to micro-manage and dictate employees basically get no micro-breaks for Facebook, etc on their shifts, they kill morale, productivity, and those companies have huge turnover.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
@JaredBusch said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Spending time on Facebook? Why should they care? If it doesn't impact productivity or damage the company in some way, they really shouldn't.
Because it IS theft by definition. You are stealing company resources to view this on your company computer.
And every moment when you are getting paid and NOT doing a task defined by your position (via job description, or boss said so, whatever) you are stealing from the company. You are paid to do tasks defined by your position. Nothing else.
Yes the football around the watercooler is also theft.
See, you have a very strict and black/white definition of how people should work. This is what is wrong with most businesses. They objectify how time is spent, not the results produced. Sure, someone might spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week working diligently and only taking their scheduled breaks, but maybe they're moving slower than they could. Maybe they must constantly refocus and therefore, even though they work non-stop, their quality suffers.
People should be judged by the results they deliver, not how they obtain said results. If I can do my job in 6 hours a day to a very high standard, and it takes someone else the full 8, why should I have to be "working" the other 2? If you're hourly, that is one thing. However, if you're salary, this is totally backwards. Even hourly, if you're in a call center where you are waiting for phone calls or cases to come in, you are still working.
Those micro-breaks to check Facebook are not stealing, their QA. Sure, MAYBE less work gets done, but I would dare say the work that gets done is better quality.
No, you are seeing something you do not like and putting your own crap on top.
I have not once stated that I see any part of this conversation any one way. I have clearly stated facts.That is all you.
Edit: Just to clarify, anyone who actually reads my postings on Mangolassi should have a solid idea of my work life, and by inference from that, my opinion on this type of thing.
I get the feeling you feel I'm lazy. Anyone who you talk to who knows me will tell you the exact opposite (except possibly my father but that's a different discussion). I'm the guy who works all day and all night because he cares about his job and the company he works for. I am borderline obsessive, and sometimes border-jump. But @scottalanmiller has commented on this exact thing many times. A person's work should not be judged by how they spent every minute but the results they achieved at the end of a day/week/month/year.
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@JaredBusch said:
Nothing is ever an issue for only one portion of a company. that type of silo mentality leads to a whole suite of problems.
I think it depends on the size of the company. But this is definitely true in companies I work for, which are around 100 to 200 employees. In companies that size, management is very much a team effort. So I'll get involved in all sorts of issues that aren't strictly IT. I work with the HR Manager on these kinds of issues all the time - we're a team.
You could say that I'm an IT Generalist but I'm also an SMB Generalist. So I can bring my expertise on SMBs to the table, as well as my IT expertise.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
People should be judged by the results they deliver, not how they obtain said results. If I can do my job in 6 hours a day to a very high standard, and it takes someone else the full 8, why should I have to be "working" the other 2?
Absolutely.
I like to think of human resources in a similar way to IT resources. You would never want to run your servers at 100% capacity all the time. If you looked at your servers right now and they were running over 50% you would be worried, right? So why expect human resources to run at 100% capacity all the time. This is where companies end up with a situation where during quiet times they are running at 100%, and during busy times they can't cope and end up letting down customers.
This is an area of interest to me, because I'm putting in a new ERP system that will increase productivity and as company we need to know how we will handle that. I'm a fan of Lean Manufacturing and Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, which generally apply to manufacturing, but can also be applied to backoffice administration. If you have a machine in your factory that can produce 10 grommets an hour but during a quite period you can only sell 5 grommets an hour, what do you do? Traditionally, the production manager will run the machine at full capacity and over-produce. Inventory will build up, and the company will lose money. This is because the production manager is judged on his efficiency, and will be punished if he only runs his machine at 50% efficiency, even if that is the best thing to do for the company. Over-production is the enemy of manufacturing.
Now apply those principles to the back office. A back office worker is generally involved in the production of spreadsheets. You can divide those spreadsheets into productive ones, ie ones that add value to the company, and non-productive ones, ie ones that add no-value to the company and are only produced so that the worker can appear busy.
The lazy Facebooker will generally only produce productive spreadsheets. He knows what is important, but once he has done that he'll slack off and go on Facebook. The conscientious worker will always find new spreadsheets to create.
In the same way that over-production in the factory actually costs money, in terms of the cost of storing and managing excess inventory, so over-production in the back-office will cost money, in terms of the cost of storing and managing excess spreadsheets. So if you're going to fire someone, fire the conscientious worker and keep the lazy Facebooker.
Google General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord for more info on how he divided his officers and why lazy workers can be better.
The counter argument to this is that a grommet machine can only make grommets, whereas a human can do an endless array of tasks. And this is a fair point. So for example, during quiet times, Acocunts staff can phone customers and chase debt, which is always productive. But the trick here is ensuring that any extra tasks you assign to your back-office staff are actually productive. They have to add to the company's bottom line, otherwise they are bullshit tasks that add no value. Setting in a place a structure to recognise the difference between productive and non-productive tasks is the key to maximising profit. But if you can't do that, you may as well let people go on Facebook for all the good it will do you.
