This video focuses on GFI WebMonitor’s Application Control capabilities, giving you an overview on why you need to manage app access, and how our solution helps you achieve that. There is no doubt that IT admins need to manage the access of web applications on their network to the Internet. Inability to do so results in productivity issues, elevated bandwidth costs and serious security concerns. Your business might want to block gaming and unproductive applications. You might prefer instead to cut bandwidth costs and block everything that is not needed for the business process. It’s also in your best interest to manage file sharing applications, to mitigate any data leakage threats.

Whatever matters most to you, it is important to recognize that firewalls are of no help in this respect. Like your browser, web applications use http or https protocols to connect to the internet. So you cannot simply block ports via your firewall. Doing so would prevent your users from accessing the internet altogether. To be able to manage web applications, you need a way of working out which requests belong to which applications. As some of these will be in line with your business needs, you then need the technology to be able to block or allow requests depending on their source.

GFI WebMonitor delivers this precise functionality, enabling IT admins to manage web applications’ Internet access, while allowing their users to browse the web safely. Using inspection technology, GFI WebMonitor identifies access requests from supported web applications or application categories and enables IT admins to allow or block them. This way, IT admins can, for example, allow social media applications for certain departments, while blocking file-sharing applications and games for everybody, without affecting the browsing experience of their users.