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Like I can't get my gtalk to work and I can't get to all my pages when I google something about Visual Studio.
Before anyone goes on and on about IT blocks you coz bla bla bla... I don't really care. I'm not browsing porn so I'm fine.
Gotta love these threads.
Afraid I'll have to go on about how IT blocks you blah blah
Since you are running a decent proxy content filter and you do work for a large mining company I presume they spent a lot of security and its pretty high up on their list, therefore ideas like browsing directly out or using the IP address or using anon proxy sites won't work as it will all be blocked already.
Also the firewall admin (if he's worth anything) will block all ports except only the ones needed - so chances are that ssh'ing out won't work.
Porn sites aren't the only sites that needs to be blocked - there's a bunch of others that are often blocked as well to protect the company as well as the employee. Imaging someone visiting a hate/racial site - if someone walks past and sees it and takes offence the company is liable and can be sue'd. It then has to prove that it has measures in place to protect its employees from such sites.
Most often chat clients will also be blocked to protect the company against DLP. In your case I"m sure its a priority as they would be some confidential documents floating around.
I"d also check your information security policy - just because you don't browse porn sites doesnt mean you can't get fired.
In most large corporates if you try and find ways to bypass security you will be incidented and possibly fired.
Also remember that the equipment you are using and resources you are consuming are owned by your company. They write the rules and tell you where/what you can and cannot do.
3G cards are a pain in the @$$ security wise - people install them and can then bypass all the security in the company. They then wonder why there are security incidents. User A goes home and surfs dodgy sites which are normally blocked at work, get infected by some nasty worm/malware, comes back to work and plugs back into the LAN....and bam...its all over. The whole network is infected.
+1
Very well said - that's why dodgy sites are blocked, to prevent virus/trojan infestation and downtime.
"But there's antivirus programs" you cry. Big deal. The newer batch of polymorphs doesn't get caught by current antivirus programs. And once you get a polymorph, it's a pain to get rid of.
So, financially, it makes sense to be anally retentive on what sites you're allowed and so on.
A home owner with one PC can get away with a night's downtime, spent to reinstall Windows.
But a company with 100+ PC's - it is not feasible to have all the PC's down and out - the financial implications can ruin any company (salaries still need to be paid, no work gets done, possible data loss, etc).
:erm:I'm all alone in my own office with my lcd not showing so no one can see.
Nope, can't help him, if port 80 to the WWW is blocked and filtered by websense.
How good is a Smoothwall with URL Filter compared to Websense?