Making sense of ‘Websense’

Websense - Does it aid employee productivity? There is no plain simple YES or NO answer to this. It depends.

It depends on scenarios - Multiple scenarios of course. Lets have a look at few such scenarios. 1. A tech architect is analyzing for the new technologies and Rich Interface Applications and his search yields him to a couple of Video samples, slideshares. Booom..websense stops him. No Entertainment!… 2. An employee is searching for the latest buzz on Ajax framework and googling takes him to a couple of good articles on streaming media. tada….Websense again, No Streaming Media!…..

There are more such scenarios that can question the usefulness of websense in a high skilled workplace.

So is there a solution? There is of course.

Objective: Block employees from spending productive time on the internet, but be business friendly

Solution: - Websense should not block websites just on meta tags. It should block only if the content is sensed as non-viewable in the corporate environment. There can be exceptions - Websense should allow users to browse a website, given that the user has asked for an exception. This could be for educational purpose or business purpose. - Since websense keeps a track of all the visited websites, the managers can be provided a means to see the report of all ‘Unauthorized’ or ‘Unproductive’ visits by the employee. - Ethical browsing - Allow users to be liable for what they do. Good or bad. But never stop/hide the right information from reaching the user at the right time.

Companies have evolved a lot. So should we as a global corporate. Lets rethink on the philosophy. It should not be a knee-jerk reaction to a singular problem. The problem is multi dimensional and so should be the solution.

My 2 cents. Pls pour in your thoughts