Employee Computer Usage and the Dangers of Casual Internet Browsing

The internet is an essential component of every dental practice, but without the proper tools in place to prevent recreational web browsing, employees can cost your business time and money. To prevent lost productivity and cyber threats by staff using office technology for personal use, DTP recommends implementing web filtering in your dental practice.

Web filters are programs that screen incoming web pages to determine if they should be displayed to a user. They allow you to set boundaries for the types of websites you do and don’t want your employees viewing during the workday. In addition to preventing lost productivity on sites like Facebook, web filters block malicious sites that could attack your network.

Web filters are highly customizable, and offer many features including the following:

• User-specific filtering, so employees needing access to commonly blocked sites, such as social media sites, have the access they need
• Filtering out entire website categories such as social networking, sports, adult, and/or gaming, as opposed to specific websites one-by-one
• Convenient automatic updates when new threats arise
• Location-aware policies
• Whitelists, which allow you to always access certain sites, even if they’re in blocked categories, and blacklists, which ensure certain websites are never accessible

When it comes to the cost of lost productivity and employee error, the numbers speak for themselves. A single employee who is paid $15.00 an hour and spends 30 minutes each workday browsing the internet costs your business almost $40.00 a week; annually, close to $2,000.00. If a computer were infected with a virus due to a staff member visiting a malicious site, you could be looking at unnecessary repair costs. For that reason, DTP highly recommends web filtering and a solid endpoint protection solution.

DTP simplifies web filtering to help maximize your productivity. With cloud-based deployment and management, there’s no need for an on-site device or software for you to worry about. We manage everything for you and can adjust user preferences as needed. If you’re interested in minimizing lost productivity with web filtering, give us a call at (770) 918-0075 to get started.