Internet access is an integral part of the corporate world, and it's virtually impossible to imagine success or growth without this essential resource. While it's a tool that provides convenience and quality for the tasks performed, the internet is also a risky environment that can harm employee productivity . Therefore, creating an internet access control policy is essential for companies that want to achieve success and deliver superior results.
From small businesses to large corporations, lost productivity is a recurring problem. With such a vast environment full of content and information, the internet ends up excessively distracting employees and causing time that should be allocated to relevant company activities to be taken up by inappropriate access.
Besides significantly harming productivity, indiscriminate internet access can cause security problems for your company . There are several traps in the digital environment set up to lure users into carrying out scams, such as data theft, financial fraud, data kidnapping, and other threats.
Cyberattacks have been causing immense losses to companies of all sizes and sectors. With the rise of digital commerce , DDoS attacks have seen meteoric growth, causing businesses to lose profitability and market positioning . Do you know how this type of cyberattack works? Check out this explanatory video:
In other words, unrestricted internet access wastes resources and increases the risk of cyberattacks . Access control emerges as an essential tool for increasing business compliance and contributing to smarter data processing.
Inappropriate internet access, in addition to wasting essential company resources and increasing the risk of cyberattacks, also impacts employee productivity and, consequently, market growth.
With this in mind, we've prepared this material with important information and essential tips to help you create an effective internet access control policy for your company. This way, you can ensure smarter use of your business resources and increase your profitability.
Internet access control policy: how does it work?
Within a company, employees must have access to all the resources and tools necessary to perform their tasks. Any access that isn't effectively tied to professional activity can be a waste of resources and a major detriment to employee productivity.
In this sense, the best way to ensure that employees remain focused and attentive to their assigned tasks is to provide a distraction-free environment. Therefore, implementing an internet access control policy is crucial for companies seeking to add value and increase employee productivity.
After the enactment of the General Data Protection Law , this issue became even more relevant. This is because most companies store information about users, customers, and suppliers, and this information must be protected at all costs, ensuring the confidentiality of the data stored, used, and handled by a company.
With so many traps lurking online, it's crucial to have all the resources and strategies to help keep cybercriminals away from a business's important and confidential data. As technology advances daily, so do the ways to steal information, commit scams, and hijack data. Therefore, the better prepared your business is, the safer it will be.
In the market, access control can be done in different ways, such as:
- Internet access control
- System access control;
- Control access to files and documents;
- Network access control.
By properly managing these resources, the company can increase its security and ensure that its employees remain focused on the strategy and demand that is truly essential to the business.
An internet access control policy is a tool designed to more efficiently manage this valuable corporate resource. With the right tool, managers can control user access and ensure that only essential resources are used during working hours.
This doesn't mean the company is being invasive or overly controlling its employees. The main objective of this strategy is to ensure that non-essential resources don't cause distractions and interruptions during the work routine and take up employees' time. This often happens with access to entertainment sites, social media, e-commerce sites, personal emails, and more.
6 essential tips
Now that we understand what an internet access control policy is and what its main purpose is within the company, let's look at some tips we've prepared to help you implement this policy more efficiently within your business.
1. Understand how internet access works within your business
The first step is to map the type of access that's relevant to your business strategy. Managers need to determine which tools and resources are needed to ensure the continuity of their activities. Based on this, it's possible to understand user behavior and, from there, establish more specific and efficient access rules .
This access mapping must identify the essential resources for performing the company's tasks, such as websites, applications, and online tools. It should also include the access requirements for each of these applications to prevent unnecessary access to confidential information.
2. Know the access patterns
To define more specific access rules, it's first necessary to monitor user access patterns. This allows managers to determine which resources, websites, and tools should be blocked for more effective access control.
Different users have different access patterns. Understanding each user's browsing habits helps establish smarter control and monitoring.
3. Determine a password creation policy
Password vulnerabilities are the leading source of vulnerability that favors the incidence of cyberattacks today. This is because many people still use obvious password combinations that can be easily guessed by cybercriminals. Your team needs to be aware that passwords must be strong and difficult to guess to ensure that stored information remains secure.
4. Establish a training process
It's natural that in a company where the internet has always been open, blocking certain resources may cause some confusion among staff. Therefore, before implementing this policy, talk to your employees and explain the reasons for this measure . They need to be aware of the importance of access control and how unauthorized access can impact a business's results.
5. Carry out constant monitoring
Monitoring is essential to ensure that the rules created are being applied and followed as expected. This phase can be complex for managers when blocking is done manually, so it's essential to rely on a smart tool that helps create customized access rules and facilitates efficient monitoring .
Lumiun provides customizable and easy-to-use tools , making it the ideal partner for your business. Providing excellent value and a streamlined platform, we can help you increase productivity within your company.
6. Information security training is important
More urgent than simply requesting the creation of more secure passwords and encouraging smarter online behavior, it's crucial that employees understand the risks and consequences of a cyberattack. Establishing a program that helps employees better understand digital security and these threats can significantly aid the implementation process.
To find out how your company's security is performing, take the test with our exclusive diagnostic tool . Based on the report, you can discover what you can change in your business and increase the security of your stored data.
5 advantages of implementing an internet access policy
As we've seen throughout this material, improper internet use can cause significant harm to your business. Therefore, implementing an internet access control policy helps ensure numerous business benefits, as we'll see below.
Increased productivity and task quality
Without the distractions of unauthorized internet access, employees can complete their tasks quickly and efficiently, improving their results throughout their work routine.
Focus on important tasks
Social media, personal emails, e-commerce sites, news and entertainment sites—all of this represents a significant drain on available work time. Once this type of access is blocked, employees can focus more on the tasks that are truly important to business continuity.
Digital security
There are several traps on the internet that can cause countless problems for both users and businesses. Blocking certain tools can make all the difference in combating cyber threats . Having the right tool for your internet access control policy , like Lumiun, helps your company reduce the chances of contamination by viruses and other malware that cause significant damage.
Better internet performance
Since the internet is a resource that demands a lot from the equipment used in the business, blocking certain resources frees up space and performance so that essential activities can be carried out with higher quality. The better the internet used by the company, the better the business's competitive positioning in the market and the better the quality of the services and activities performed within the organization.
Monitoring internet usage
Through an efficient blocking tool, managers can more intelligently monitor the type of access that is performed within the company, and from there, create more specific and intelligent access rules focused on business quality .
Reduced maintenance costs
As mentioned earlier, the internet is rife with threats that can cause significant harm to companies and users. Some of these threats can disrupt the proper functioning of machines, interrupting activities and rendering resources unavailable, generating maintenance costs. By preventing unauthorized access, companies avoid creating points of vulnerability and, consequently, are less vulnerable to cyberattacks.
How to create a more efficient access control policy with Lumiun?
Using the tips mentioned above, managers can establish a more intelligent process for creating a quality internet access policy. It's crucial that, in addition to the company's most commonly used resources, those responsible understand users' internet access profiles.
With Lumiun , you can monitor access and create more specific rules for your business . For example, if a certain group of employees tends to access social media more frequently, you can specifically block that access.
If the most common access is to sports and online game promotion websites, the policy can also be created based on this information. The important thing is that the company blocks anything that actually hinders its activities and business continuity.
Lumiun offers smart and efficient tools that will help managers establish an efficient and comprehensive internet access control policy , all with an easy-to-use interface and intuitive dashboard. What are you waiting for? Discover our products and boost your business's productivity.
Request a no-obligation demo or free trial.
Until later!
