Web Content Filtering for a Safer and Productive Internet

A lot of people think that web content filtering plays “Big Brother”, an overly executive software, to increase surveillance of people visiting the internet. It is often misconstrued as software that suppresses people’s right to wangle information. In reality, accessing unrepealable websites on the internet during office or school hours can be a source of lark and security concerns. Web content filtering aims to create a unscratched environment to protect users from online harm, without spying on users. Consequently, it stops productivity from slowing lanugo while protecting businesses from online threats.

What is Web Content Filtering?

Web content filtering is the process that screens and restricts wangle to specific web pages. The aim is to woodcut websites that could be unproductive or harmful if accessed. Uses include keeping employees from visiting spammy websites or educational institutions trying to protect students from sultana content.

It can be easy to misplace web content filtering with URL filtering. But URL filtering is a type of content filtering. Web content filtering can work by blocking keywords, file types, malware correlations, or contextual themes of content resources.

Why is Web Content Filtering Important?

Hacking, phishing, malware, and viruses are some of the biggest threats to businesses. Web content filtering can prevent social engineering and fraud, expressly phishing attacks. Phishing websites are created by malicious users to impersonate legitimate companies in order to obtain sensitive data such as login credentials, personal information, written details, and legal documents.

Cybercriminals often use domain spoofing in phishing attacks. Cybercriminals fake a website name to trick users into interacting as if it were legitimate. When web content filters identify phishing websites by their URL or content, visits to those websites can be prevented.

Benefits of Web Content Filtering

Web content filtering offers several benefits for individuals as well as organizations.

Increases Staff Productivity

Web content filtering in offices serves to filter non-work related content such as social media websites or other websites unrelated to work or considered distractions. They take up a vast value of employees’ time, decreasing staff productivity levels.

Improves Internet Bandwidth

The use of the internet that is not related to work can negatively stupefy an organization’s bandwidth. Limiting staff wangle to websites, such as video streaming sites, can modernize internet bandwidth and enable faster connections for all employees.

Minimizes Malware Infections

Blocking wangle to websites that siphon a upper risk of malware protects visitor data and users surpassing such websites have a endangerment to introduce malicious payloads. By using Domain Name System (DNS) filtering, organizations can woodcut the threat of internet-based malware, thereby reducing the remediation time and workload for IT teams.

Reduces Legal Liability

Companies that urgently monitor the website usage of employees are in a largest position to manage undesired incidents. Since web content filtering restricts employees from downloading offensive or illegal content, organizations can protect themselves from regulatory violations.

Keeps Kids Safe

Web content filtering helps administrators implement safety policies concerning system usage through the school’s network. Web content filtering prevents wangle to obscene, adult, or violent images to wastefulness online wangle with safety. At home, parents may not unchangingly be present to monitor the kind of content their children are exposed to. Plus, they may not know how to restrict harmful websites.

Web Content Filtering: Pros and Cons

How Does Web Content Filtering Work?

The technology overdue web content filtering works by identifying patterns like objects within images or text strings that indicate harmful or undesirable websites. By using predetermined rules, the content filter identifies commonalities such as objects within images or text strings such as keywords and groups them into categories such as adult, gambling, gaming, sports, and so on. Once there is a match from a site seeking access, they are marked as objectionable and denied access.

Content filters come as hardware or software and often are part of the firewall. Administrators can install filtering software on servers or can incorporate hardware on the network. Mobile content filtering is steadily gaining importance, expressly in the workplace, whether the devices are corporate- or employee-owned. Such undesirable sites are productivity sinks and pose malware risks.

Different Types of Web Content Filtering

The pursuit are variegated types of filtering:

• Server-Side Filtration: These filters manage web traffic for all users present on the server, say, of a large organization. Server-side filters are installed on a inside server that links to all computers on the network, giving the visitor well-constructed tenancy over customizing filters.
• Client-Side Filtration: A client-side filter is installed on the end user’s system. These filters cannot be bypassed by the end users and are towardly for a merchantry environment that requires maintaining systems as per visitor policies.
• Search Engine Filtration: When these filters are turned on, search engines will only exhibit results that are in line with the organization’s policy. Additionally, undesirable content not obstructed by the visitor but deemed harmful by the filter may be blocked.
• ISP-Level Filtration: The filters implemented by ISPs use network-level filtering of broadband connections to woodcut wangle to content.

Content Filtering with Scalefusion MDM

Scalefusion MDM lets IT administrators tenancy the web content that users can view on the browsers of managed devices. They can woodcut or indulge URLs based on the company’s requirements. Whitelisting ensures users will have wangle to websites that have been tried by the company.

Whereas URLs widow to the blocklist cannot be viewed on the device browser. The URLs to be unliable or restricted can be widow manually or by uploading a CSV. After enrolling the devices, IT admins can indulge or woodcut the website through a policy and push it onto the devices.

Website Whitelisting – How to do it

Setting Up a Kiosk Browser

Companies can moreover set up a kiosk browser using Scalefusion MDM. By enabling kiosk mode, wangle to mobile devices will be limited to the websites authorized by the IT administrators. This improves productivity by permitting employees to wangle whitelisted websites or web-based apps when the devices are locked lanugo in kiosk mode.

Wrapping Up

People believe that web content filtering interferes with individuals’ rights, which has been the subject of a contentious discussion. The reality is that web content filtering protects companies as well as individuals from harmful and malicious content while ensuring wangle to legitimate information on the web.