Controlling employee internet activity key to addressing Middle East ...

"Because organizations do not have the right infrastructure and policies in place to control how their employees use the corporate internet, they have exposed themselves not only to the loss of productivity but also to a myriad of online threats. At a time when we do in fact have the technologies available to grant a very high level of visibility and control over the usage behaviour, organizations cannot choose to simply turn a blind eye. The business impact of such unregulated usage is far to severe to be left unaddressed," said Nicolai Solling.

Palo Alto Networks bi-annual Application Usage and Risk Report assessed the raw application traffic from 2,036 organizations worldwide between November 2011 and May 2012 and focused on 3 primary findings:

? Streaming video bandwidth consumption increases by more than 300%. Since the last version of the report (covering the April to November 2011 time period), total bandwidth consumed by streaming video tripled to 13% and now represents a more significant infrastructure challenge to organizations. Furthermore, an average of 34 different streaming media applications were found on 97% of participating organizations' networks. This included an increase in the use of streaming video services such as YouTube and Netflix in North America, as well as an increase in the use of P2P video streaming network PPStream in the Asia-Pacific region.

? P2P filesharing bandwidth consumption skyrockets. P2P filesharing bandwidth consumption jumped 700% to represent 14% of overall bandwidth observed, growing more than any other application category. Overall, an average of seven different P2P filesharing applications were found on 89% of networks worldwide. While not as bandwidth-intensive as P2P, browser-based filesharing applications were more common. An average of 13 browser-based filesharing variants were detected on 89% of the participating organizations' networks. Despite the takedown of popular filesharing site MegaUpload in January 2012, browser-based filesharing held steady at roughly 1% of overall bandwidth at organizations worldwide.

? Social networking continues to define itself and newer players see growth. Tumblr and Pinterest both were notable over the last six-month period for gaining traction in terms of frequency and volume of use, despite the continued dominance that both Facebook and Twitter exhibit. At least one social networking application was detected on 97% of the participating organizations, with an average of 29 different social networking applications found in each participating organization.

Nicolai Solling insists that enterprises need to address the true cause of their network problems. "Organizations in the region tend to address the problem of poor network performance through the purchase of additional bandwidth. However as the report clearly highlights, it is not the network capacity but the manner in which it is being utilized that the real problem which needs to be addressed. The sooner IT departments define policies around acceptable internet usage the sooner they will be able to regain control of their network infrastructure," he concluded.

Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/controlling-employee-internet-activity-key-addressing-306786

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