Shouldn't you be working? Track online use of social media on business networks

SYDNEY - March 12, 2017 - PRLog -- Layer 3/4 Internet monitoring

If we use conventional Internet monitoring like layer 3 and 4 of the OSI model we will get a lot of information on our Internet traffic. We can see at the port level we're getting some port 80 and port 443 traffic (http and https). However, at this level we don't know what websites users are visiting.


Result: Social media traffic is impossible to see with layer3/4

What about looking at your http(s) proxy server?

What information can we get from our web/http(s) proxy server? Well a web proxy server, or a domain name server for that matter, will give you domain name information to go on.

What domain information can we see?

Result: Some useful domains but a lot of Content Delivery Networks that obscure some application types

Deep packet inspection gives us application level monitoring

With deep packet inspection we get more information about each packet that travels to and from the Internet on our network. We can see past the content delivery network information which doesn't really tell us anything. With deep packet inspection the information is much more useful. Each packet itself will tell us what it's source or destination is. If a packet is sent from or going to Facebook the packet itself will let us know. With deep packet inspection it doesn't matter how we get to the information, whether it be content delivery network or another proxy server, the packet itself will give us all the information we need.

Findings and conclusion

With deep packet inspection we're able to quickly determine what users are actually doing on our network. Deep packet inspection can highlight social media sites accessed and we can also see other application types we may not want on our network, such as BitTorrent and Steam. What does this enable us to do?

   Track social media use throughout the day

   Determine if social traffic negatively impacts business application traffic

   Find the local PCs/Macs/Phones which are accessing social media

   With Active Directory integration and NetScope find out which users are responsible

   Protect your important application traffic with QoS


Want to find out more?

https://netscope.io/blog/track-social-media-use