MailGuard tweaks WebGuard to help manage ‘Web browsing’

According to Andrew Johnson, MailGuard marketing director, during the last four months the vendor has been overwhelmed with enquiries for its managed service.

“Companies of all sizes, incorporating all industry sectors have voiced their concern over web-based threats and web productivity. This is resulting in a growing demand for the company’s fully hosted and managed web-filtering service,’ he said.

They [users] are seeking detailed reporting and help in controlling what their staff can browse and download, as well as keeping the organisation safe from web viruses, junk, and offensive downloads or browsing activity, said Johnson.

“The rise of ‘underground intranets’ in the workplace through social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is costing Australian employers millions of dollars yearly, as well as opening company networks to malicious attacks,” said Johnson.

“Research is telling us that if just one employee spends one hour of company time on Facebook daily, it potentially costs an employer over $6,200 per year and more disturbing is the fact that an increasing number of web sites and internet applications targeting personal usage are hosts to spyware, viruses, and other internet threats.”

According to Johnson, WebGuard 2.0 eliminates web browsing abuse, offensive or pornographic browsing and time wasting. The service is managed through a secure web console and produces daily and weekly reports as well as managing and logging people’s access to the Internet.

Email or SMS alerts can also be set up to notify administrators immediately of excessive or inappropriate use.

WebGuard 2.0 operates across multiple data centres in both Sydney and Melbourne, with Perth opening in early 2008. “It is impossible to deliver a seamless business grade web filtering service experience in Australia without distributed infrastructure across multiple states and key ISPs.

"We are committed to supporting the Australian region while also growing our footprint in Asia Pacific and beyond. This is critical in order to achieve the agreed performance, redundancy and SLA commitments to our customers,” said Johnson.

The company is addressing emerging markets for WebGuard 2.0 in New Zealand, USA, UK and a number of Middle East countries.

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