Monitoring Internet Usage

Originally Posted by ophic

They can monitor network traffic. So unless you want the vm to just sit there and be all secret, and not connect to anything, then umm... won't work.

they can yes but they may not depending on how much they have spent to monitor. and that method isn't great as id u have to download say a pdf or something it could show you as having more traffic than others but u are actually doing your work and spending less time on the net than others.

[Dave20046]

ooh , slightly on topic - to give the guru a picture form the other side of the fence. I want to monitor my users traffic as the mongs are maxing out the bandwidth, best tool for the job?

We have a situation of internet access abuse, so in the browser setting we only allowed certain sites. Fortunately the mongs that work here are not clever enough to get around it.

[fizzwheel]

If you are being monitored it will be for a reason, more than likely company / hr policy.

If you are trying to bypass the proxy or monitoring solution, I'd be very careful technically anything is possible. However you get caught bypassing the monitoring solution what will your line manager / hr do to you then.

[Dave20046]

Originally Posted by SV-net

We have a situation of internet access abuse, so in the browser setting we only allowed certain sites. Fortunately the mongs that work here are not clever enough to get around it.

Nah we're lax about them checking the mugbook and scrotmail it's just the idiot that sits there downloading crap and streaming vids all day. One day this week bandwidth jumped by 3 gig

Originally Posted by TheOnlyNemesis

they can yes but they may not depending on how much they have spent to monitor

Which you don't know, which is exactly we would need to know the infrastructure. Being found to be doing something to circumvent the monitoring in place would be a much more serious breach of the IT policy than to be spending too much time on the web. It'd be a disciplinary hearing, not just a quiet "lay off the internet" chat, so don't give the guy advice that could get him into trouble at work if he decides to trust your information and follow it.

It's ike playing slot machines only when you know they are about to pay out, to cheat any system, you need to know the system.

Similar to us. We can access ebay, you tube etc but not BBC iplayer (so no more radio) facebook, bebo (social networking sites) etc are blocked by 'Websense'

I'll just keep going as normal until I get pulled. I've not had the 'lay off the internet' chat so hopefully they were downloading stuff or something which has flagged them up.

[madcockney]

Not wanting to sound big headed but I look after the network for a large establishment and we have hundreds of computers and laptops connected and we can tell who's connected, what machine they were on, where they went, at what time, and what they downloaded. We can also dynamically block what sites users can get to, and what types of protocols, applications they can use. We can tell if a rogue machine has been added to the network and that will normally be blocked automatically. Most organisations, except the smallest, have something similar so your chances of being hidden from monitoring are virtually zilch, Even if you remotely accessed your home machine it would show up as Internet access

I should imagine that you have been asked to reduce it as your employer has seen too much Internet activity during normal work hours for non work purposes. If that is the case then you are lucky as they can be far more aggressive in handling the problem than just a request.

There is also another reason why organisations stop Internet access to all but the necessary sites etc and that is to stop Virulii, trojans, etc being brought into the establishment. and onto the network, though one of the worst culprits of this are USB flash drives. Hence many organisations block USB flash drives, as well as to stop staff removing data from their networks and passing onto others.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by TheOnlyNemesis

they can yes but they may not depending on how much they have spent to monitor. and that method isn't great as id u have to download say a pdf or something it could show you as having more traffic than others but u are actually doing your work and spending less time on the net than others.

point being, a virtual machine does nothing to protect you from network monitoring, as it has to use the same network. It might get around workstation monitoring.

btw your employer/IT dept could quite easily monitor your entire network for a total software investment of £0. Don't judge everything on cost.