Striking A Balance Between Flexibility And Security

IT professionals are plagued with the massive challenge of trying to secure their networks from malicious threats. And the people who use the technology are constantly complaining about blocked Internet access, social media restrictions, and even application limiting. Given that more and more organizations are incorporating social media into their communications efforts, these restrictions can interfere with your staff’s ability to do their job.

So how can IT professionals strike a balance between security and flexibility? Getting online can be dangers as threats are on the rise. Having IT spending months every year removing malware from social networking sites is not the answers. Locking down computers so that users can’t access these sites only creates dissatisfied users. It seems like there’s a big divide between the groups that maintain technology and the groups that use it.

Fortunately there are alternatives! One solution is to install software that will “wipe” user computers clean of any unwanted files periodically. This can be a real lifesaver for IT Teams where each technician is responsible for managing hundreds of computers. With this solution users can do whatever they need to get their work done, but now all of their customization – that waterfall screen saver, the funny mouse pointer that looks like a cat, and that annoying web browser toolbar they installed – all of these changes disappear with a simple click or reboot.

Or even better, when a user runs into a problem with their machine. Now IT doesn’t have to waste time reimaging the machine and cleaning it out. Instead, they can ask the user to simply restart their machine and it will be reset to its original state. But don’t worry. Not everything gets wiped out if you don’t want it to. There’s an option to set-up special partitionsto save the user’s hard work. Now users are happy getting the freedom they want and administrators are smiling because their volume of support tickets just dropped at least 50%. Maybe now IT can finally leave the office at 5… just this once.