(Updated April 2020) Most companies have a firewall in place on their network to protect incoming and outgoing network traffic from malicious attacks. Traditionally, firewalls can safeguard all of the devices within a company by blocking the point of entry. However, as more and more companies are migrating to remote workforces with distributed networks, there is a demand for a better solution to monitor and control employee’s Internet access across your organization.
Understanding how Firewall works compare to a hosted on-premises solution will increase your network security and employee productivity for your organization – both for your internal network and your remote teams.
Imagine managing hundreds of different firewalls from your distributed networks across different hardware vendors and software. The number of holes you have to jump through and the mountains of passwords you have to remember will be a pain to manage.
An on-premises solution, such as CurrentWare, provides an all-in-one centralized console for you to filter your employee’s Internet access, monitor their computer activities and restrict endpoint device access.
The biggest weakness of a Firewall is the single point of contact. The moment you remove a device from a network where the Firewall protects, it becomes vulnerable to all types of external threats such as malware, trojans, phishing scams, and viruses.
In this section, we will compare the primary features of an employee monitoring solution using CurrentWare’s features to a traditional firewall. Here are the features that will be compared:
Tracking Internet Activities: Report on which websites your users visited throughout the day.
CurrentWare BrowseReporter | Firewalls |
---|---|
CurrentWare tracks the exact webpage that the user is actively browsing on. It doesn’t include noisy URLs such as ads, analytics, and javascript. | Firewall sniffs every incoming and outgoing packet. Run a report from a firewall log can lead to information overload and makes it hard to read. |
Tracking Full URLs: Does it track the entire URL or just the domain?
CurrentWare BrowseReporter | Firewalls |
---|---|
CurrentWare tracks the webpages in full URLs. | Most Firewalls track only the domain. |
Tracking Spent Time Accurately: Measuring the time users spend on websites
CurrentWare BrowseReporter | Firewalls |
---|---|
BrowseReporter tracks the active time employees spend on websites. It can tell you how long the Internet browser window was in focus. | Without a client to keep a timer running on the devices, Firewalls have no way to track how long users spend on a webpage. It can only track the number of pings or hits. |
Tracking Windows Application Usage: employee productivity is not only based on time spent on websites but also time spent on business applications.
CurrentWare BrowseReporter | Firewalls |
---|---|
BrowseReporter tracks active windows applications that are running on your employees’ computers. | Firewalls don’t have a way to track application usage. |
Report by Windows users: generate reports based on which Windows users were logged in.
CurrentWare | Firewalls |
---|---|
CurrentWare can report by windows users and computer names. | Firewalls will report only by computer name or IP address but it cannot report by windows users. |
Monitoring Remote Workers: having the ability to manage remote workers.
CurrentWare | Firewalls |
---|---|
CurrentWare can monitor computer activities from local and remote workers. | Firewalls cannot manage computers outside the network. |
Email Report: sending email reports to the system administrators.
CurrentWare | Firewalls |
---|---|
CurrentWare can monitor computer activities from local and remote workers. | Firewalls cannot schedule email reports without a complicated setup. |
Email Alerts: sending emails to the system administrators when a user violates a company’s Internet or device usage policy.
CurrentWare | Firewalls |
---|---|
Alerts you by email when an employee violates your company’s Internet usage policy. | Firewalls cannot schedule email alerts without a complicated setup. |
Storage: the hard disk it takes to store the computer activities data.
CurrentWare | Firewalls |
---|---|
You can store data in CurrentWare indefinitely. There is no file size limit. | Log file size varies based on manufacturer. Most routers and firewalls have a small log file limit. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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__cfruid | session | Cloudflare sets this cookie to identify trusted web traffic. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
JSESSIONID | session | The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. |
LS_CSRF_TOKEN | session | Cloudflare sets this cookie to track users’ activities across multiple websites. It expires once the browser is closed. |
OptanonConsent | 1 year | OneTrust sets this cookie to store details about the site's cookie category and check whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent from the use of each category. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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__cf_bm | 30 minutes | This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. |
_zcsr_tmp | session | Zoho sets this cookie for the login function on the website. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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_calendly_session | 21 days | Calendly, a Meeting Schedulers, sets this cookie to allow the meeting scheduler to function within the website and to add events into the visitor’s calendar. |
_gaexp | 2 months 11 days 7 hours 3 minutes | Google Analytics installs this cookie to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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_ga | 2 years | The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors. |
_ga_GY6RPLBZG0 | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. |
_gcl_au | 3 months | Provided by Google Tag Manager to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services. |
_gid | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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_opt_expid | past | Set by Google Analytics, this cookie is created when running a redirect experiment. It stores the experiment ID, the variant ID and the referrer to the page that is being redirected. |
IDE | 1 year 24 days | Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile. |
NID | 6 months | NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt.innertube::nextId | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
yt.innertube::requests | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
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_gaexp_rc | past | No description available. |
34f6831605 | session | No description |
383aeadb58 | session | No description available. |
663a60c55d | session | No description available. |
6e4b8efee4 | session | No description available. |
c72887300d | session | No description available. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-tracking | 1 year | No description |
crmcsr | session | No description available. |
currentware-_zldp | 2 years | No description |
currentware-_zldt | 1 day | No description |
et_pb_ab_view_page_26104 | session | No description |
gaclientid | 1 month | No description |
gclid | 1 month | No description |
handl_ip | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_landing_page | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_original_ref | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_ref | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_ref_domain | 1 month | No description |
handl_url | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_url_base | 1 month | No description |
handlID | 1 month | No description |
HandLtestDomainName | session | No description |
HandLtestDomainNameServer | 1 day | No description |
isiframeenabled | 1 day | No description available. |
m | 2 years | No description available. |
nitroCachedPage | session | No description |
organic_source | 1 month | No description |
organic_source_str | 1 month | No description |
traffic_source | 1 month | No description available. |
uesign | 1 month | No description |
user_agent | 1 month | No description available. |
ZCAMPAIGN_CSRF_TOKEN | session | No description available. |
zld685336000000002056state | 5 minutes | No description |