So, basically the place I'm working as has grown out of being able to let everybody do whatever they want online so I'm researching some software to implement to at first track what everybody is viewing and then eventually block things. Any recommendations on software to help with this?

11/14/2007 9:59:05 AM

enable logging on your firewall to a syslog server

11/14/2007 10:11:04 AM

so your first priority is logging/keeping track of what people are doing online
and your second priority sounds like "content filtering"


how many users would you be keeping track of?
i assume your computers are on a domain...correct?
whats your budget for this stuff?

11/14/2007 10:31:58 AM

First priority is tracking what they're doing so we can show them and they can't deny it. After we've established that we want to be able to filter by keyword, website, whatever... all pretty basic stuff.

We only really need to limit about 10 computers to this type of restriction for now. The rest of the employees here are either management/owners and they can do whatever they want or it's a shared computer on an assembly line and there's not much way they could be wasting time because they have too much work to do.

I've installed and am testing a pretty good program called cyclope internet filtering and it's doing exactly what I want so far. Budget needs to preferably be under a few hundred dollars for now. If we decide to do something like this company wide on 50+ computers then obviously we'd be willing to spend much more. Yes, all computers are on a domain.

I'd also like to be able to view whatever these employees are doing (as in, live view of their screen) at any time.

Another problem is before I was here (or rather, while I was in school) they hired timewarner to install their new firewall and TW won't give me the passwords and are a royal pain to get to make changes for me, thus I don't have anyway of setting it to log to a syslog server.

11/14/2007 10:53:57 AM

Surfcontrol

11/14/2007 11:02:01 AM

looks pretty good...

11/14/2007 11:15:51 AM

Quote :

"I'd also like to be able to view whatever these employees are doing (as in, live view of their screen) at any time. "

what software is out that which offers this functionality?

11/14/2007 11:23:07 AM

I don't know, but I know they used to have something that did it when I was in like middle school.. That's second on the list though and will probably never be actually implemented here

11/14/2007 11:32:02 AM

I can understand blocking productivity killing websites, but do you really need to be all big brother about it?

11/14/2007 11:34:08 AM

Probably not, that's why I stated that part will probably not be implemented. It is something the bosses asked me about though, so it's something I need to at least look into

11/14/2007 11:38:08 AM

what's really gonna be interesting is seeing how much traffic is from me viewing brentroad.com

11/14/2007 11:44:08 AM

^ thewolfweb.com is blocked here (sony), but not brentroad.com

gotta love it.

11/14/2007 11:51:37 AM

i've been using cyblock proxy and having our firewall force all http traffic through it. works pretty well.

11/14/2007 11:53:52 AM

Quote :

""I'd also like to be able to view whatever these employees are doing (as in, live view of their screen) at any time. " what software is out that which offers this functionality?"

VNC, set it up as a service and name it something obscure
then hide the tray icon

11/14/2007 1:21:55 PM

smoothwall/pfsense as your gateway

11/14/2007 1:36:39 PM

You could just send out an email that says you have all this set up and you have the ability to see and record anything they do on screen.



Just bluff your way out of this.

11/14/2007 1:38:25 PM

meh, theyre computer illiterate, I'm just gonna set IE/firefox to use a proxy server, setup a proxy server that records everything for now and be done with it... It'll get the job done for now

11/14/2007 1:44:59 PM

also smoothcrim is right

pfsense is one of the most powerful distros i've ever used

you won't be disappointed

AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE NUKKA

11/14/2007 1:45:58 PM

GONNA LOOK INTO THAT TOO THEN, THANKS

11/14/2007 1:50:44 PM

note to self: anytime i want to feel important just accidentally block everybody's access to the internet completely... i had like 15 phone calls at once when i did that a few mins ago lol

11/14/2007 4:41:04 PM

hahaha



just block myspace.


you'll get at least that many claiming the internet is "broken"

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 4:50 PM. Reason : lolol]

11/14/2007 4:50:16 PM

that's what started this actually

11/14/2007 5:02:37 PM

Quote :

"You could just send out an email that says you have all this set up and you have the ability to see and record anything they do on screen. Just bluff your way out of this."

we do this + a squid proxy for out hourly staff.

11/14/2007 5:10:08 PM

I can't bluff my bosses who will want to see the sites these ppl are going to... I've got it working now, everybody is being monitored This should get interesting tomorrow

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 6:01 PM. Reason : a]

11/14/2007 6:01:01 PM

what's your topology like? Server03 domain?

Did you install software on the server, or use another box?

11/14/2007 6:39:02 PM

2 main servers running server 2003, one domain controller, one backup basically. i'm running this software on an old server that's also running server 2003 but honestly isn't good enough for much beyond this... its like a 500mhz machine from 1999 lol, I only had it still up at all to get some old files off of and decided to format and use it to test stuff on..

11/14/2007 8:18:02 PM

# of users?

all your equip is at one site?

11/14/2007 8:19:14 PM

I'd have to look but pretty sure it's still under 50... most don't really do anything though so it's not much load on the server or network... only trying to limit about 5 computers up here and none anywhere else. we have another office in SC that has its own file server, site to site vpn between the two and maybe 10 computers down there...

11/14/2007 8:23:20 PM

websense might work for the filtering at least.

what equipment can you not get into?

11/14/2007 8:23:42 PM

only thing i dont have access to is the firewall at this office... we're being overcharged like a motherfucker for it tho monthly by timewarner so I'm already writing up something to the boss to buy some new equipment to replace it... so, ignore that part, it won't be a problem in a week or two

11/14/2007 8:27:46 PM

so you run that shit alone?


is it your only job title?


what kinda salary are you on?





sorry about all the questions, PM the answers if you'd rather them not be all over the interweb.

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 8:31 PM. Reason : alone]

11/14/2007 8:31:14 PM

PM'd you... but basically yeah it's just me, it's all I do unless it's absolutly necessary for me to do some drawings for them...and I'm being paid pure shit right now

11/14/2007 8:39:29 PM

Quote :

"i dont have access to is the firewall at this office."

isnt there always a way in? is it a cisco device? what model?

11/14/2007 8:44:12 PM

I'm sure we could get you into a hardware device.

11/14/2007 8:45:34 PM

sonicwall firewall/vpn.. I believe T710 or something like that is the model #. get me in guys default passwords didn't work and i quit looking after that. i guess i could always reset it and load the original image or something like that...

11/14/2007 8:48:05 PM

can you auto redirect blocked sites to the company website, that would be funny

11/14/2007 10:21:44 PM

yeah, surfkontrol is pretty badass and will let me do that... good idea, although our website sucks more dick than whores in the red light district

11/15/2007 3:49:51 AM

http://secunia.com/advisories/27469/

11/15/2007 6:57:29 AM

I see... that isn't the model we have, though. I'm still trying to figure out how to reset this thing and load a factory image with default passwords... Hell I think we're going to ditch it all together and switch to some new cisco equipment next week anyways so it may not be worth the effort

11/15/2007 11:53:26 AM

FWIW, the NCDOT recently switched to http://www.spectorsoft.com/

bastards...

11/16/2007 1:40:11 AM