The popularity of websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube has exploded and many organizations are now racing to catch up with the potential business benefits and the implication of workplace access to Web 2.0 content. Social Networking and Social Media / Streaming Media are a phenomenon that is drastically changing the consumption of bandwidth and productivity levels of many businesses.

Our own experience has shown that a typical organization spends as much of 90% of its Internet bandwidth on FLV (Flash Video) files and YouTube*. Facebook and Twitter are often amongst the top websites accessed during office hours and this usage is rarely for work purposes.

Monitoring the use of Social Networking and Streaming Media can be a political issue for some organization who don’t want to upset employees or create fears of Big Brother. However, it is every employer’s right to monitor and manage their business resources and workplace Web access is a privilege provided to help facilitate employee’s jobs; not a right to be abused.

Managing Social Networking & Streaming Media with iSheriff

With iSheriff SaaS you can implement flexible policies to help manage the use of Social Networking sites and Streaming Media:

• Access easy to understand reports on Streaming Media and Social Networking sites anytime, anywhere. Enable your business to truly understand what role these sites play for your organization and quickly and effectively identify users who are abusing their access.
• Restrict user access to sites such as YouTube and Facebook to out of office hours, personal time or apply time or bandwidth limitations on these sites to automatically curb excessive non-business use.

*Trial iSheriff Security as a Service and see for yourself how much bandwidth your organization spends on YouTube. It’s free, there’s no obligation and it’s fast and easy to setup. With just a simple 15-day trial you can learn precisely how your Internet connection is used via rolling reports.