Managing Monkey Business!

If we continue to treat Internet as a fancy gimmick, we will never be able to

derive maximum benefits from this extremely powerful medium. And to ensure

maximum productivity in the corporate world, laying down IT policies is a must.

Internet and monkey busness? One might wonder as to what is the co-relation.

Well, monkey business has a lot to do with the Internet. If we don´t stop the

misuse of the Internet, we will never be able to derive maximum benefits from

this amazing technology.

Imagine a situation in a corporate office, fifteen years ago. The year is

1987. It´s 11:30 AM and the peak time for office activities. Everyone is busy

with their jobs and suddenly one person decides that he or she wants to talk to

each one of his or

her friends at that very moment and tell them a juicy story.

This story is about how a colleague who got into trouble with her parents who

disapproved of her boyfriend and how she was now planning to get married to him

secretly.

To do this, the person would have had to pick up the phone and call all the

friends one by one and tell them the story. For the colleagues, they could have

gathered around his or her table and discussed the story. This would have

created quite a commotion in the office and the person could have lost the job

or at least got a strong memo from the boss!

Now To The Present



The year is 2002. It´s 11:30 AM and the peak time for office activities.

Everyone is busy with their jobs and suddenly one person decides that he or she

wants to talk to everyone of his or her friends at this very moment and tell

them a juicy story about how a colleague

Abracadabra! Tap Tap Tap Click Send! Your mail has been sent! No commotion in

the office, no losing the job, no memo from the boss. That´s the year 2002. But

is it so simple as this? No. The real thing begins now! Everyone has an e-mail

account. Everyone keeps checking the mail frequently. Many have a Yahoo!

messenger account. Within five minutes of that juicy mail leaving the computer

of our friend, we all get the story in our mailboxes. Everyone must react to the

‘important’ bit of news. So e-mails start flying in the cyberspace. There is

a frenzy of fast typing of messages on the Yahoo! messenger. The boss is coming

towards your cubicle? No problems, just minimize the e-mail window, switch over

to your Excel sheet and pretend to work!

This is happening almost in every office today where the employees have been

given unrestricted e-mail and Internet access.

With the great advantages of the Internet, you are getting an unwanted monkey

on your back. How do you manage this monkey business? You can´t completely

eliminate this and the other problems that the Internet access brings along, but

you can do your best to minimize them. You need properly laid down ‘IT

policies’ and you must implement them as strictly as possible.

At least three IT Policies are essential for any corporate office: E-mail

policy, virus control policy and an Internet access policy.

E-MAIL POLICY



E-mail Policy is very important not only for controlling misuse, but also

very important legally, so that the company does not get dragged into unpleasant

situations in future. The Enron episode has made it very clear, how important a

role can the e-mail play during legal proceedings.

In most cases the employer is held responsible for all the information

transmitted on or from their systems. As a result, inappropriate e-mails can

result in multi-million dollar penalties. A UK firm was forced to pay £4,50,000

in an out-of-court settlement after an employee sent an e-mail stating that one

of their competitors was in financial difficulties. A company can also be liable

if one of its employees sends an e-mail containing a virus.

The physical limit on size of attachments to e-mails can also be set properly

to prevent employees from sending and receiving large image files. There must be

a clear bifurcation between users who have access only to local e-mail on the

LAN and those having external e-mail access on the Internet.

You can even use email-filtering software to check the contents of your

employee´s e-mails for typical keywords. It is essential to have a policy that

clearly states the possibility of e-mail monitoring. If you do not have such as

policy you could be liable for privacy infringement. E-mail filtering can also

serve as a deterrent to employees for minimizing the misuse.

VIRUS CONTROL POLICY



Through unrestricted access to the Internet and e-mail, maximum amount of

viruses creep in to your corporate network. A virus control policy must be

implemented throughout the corporate office to prevent possible damage to data

and documents as well as the unproductive down time resulting from virus

attacks.

Some typical clauses from a virus control policy can go like this:

l All computers and servers should be

installed with a standard anti-virus software

l Virus definitions files should be

updated periodically to avoid new virus attack (on a weekly or fortnightly

basis)

l Every individual should exercise

extreme caution when opening attachments. Never open an attachment unless it is

expected.

l All floppy disks should be scanned

with anti-virus first to prevent virus infection

The virus control policy must be followed with a well-defined procedure

specific to the virus control software package that you are using.

INTERNET ACCESS POLICY



When the Internet access is provided to employees over the corporate LAN

through a proxy server, it is very important to control the access rights of the

users. With unrestricted access, people can soon start browsing the XXX sites or

at least the entertainment and fun sites during office hours. Downloading of

large image files, mp3s, screen savers and so on can affect the LAN performance

and make everyone else´s PC slow to operate on the LAN. Slow operation of PCs

on the LAN can cause up to 10 to 15 percent loss of productive time employees

spend in the office. To keep the misuse in control, access to unwanted sites can

be blocked. Access through the proxy server can be restricted only to people who

really need it. Network activity can be monitored by the network administrator

at frequent intervals to see who is doing what. The Internet access policy must

clearly indicate to every user that frequent monitoring will be exercised by the

IT department to prevent misuse, so no one complains about their privacy later.

It is really important that you must have a well-defined policy on all these

matters and make it available to every employee for reference, before it is

implemented. These policies will help in keeping the disadvantages of the

Internet to a minimum.

Ashok Dongre