FOR
The reporting facilities of CSMART are superb, allowing interested parties to see the information at whatever level of detail they want, whenever they want.
AGAINST
One mistake in the documentation’s contents (a missing page number), which doesn’t constitute a major problem.
VERDICT
An excellent and eminently usable product, CSMART is an ideal solution for companies who want to monitor and audit their employees’ Internet activities, and nowadays, that must be most companies.

No one can deny that Internet access has become a vital tool for the majority of companies. Whether it is used to communicate with customers or business partners, as a shop front for attracting new customers, or even as a research tool, the Internet is now business as usual. However, such access brings with it a whole host of related problems. Obviously, one of the biggest problems is employees surfing the Internet for non work-related information.

Not only is this a waste of company time – and therefore money – but it also opens up the company to a number of possibly even more damaging threats: viral infection, or the downloading of information that could be detrimental in legal (and indeed moral) ways, such as pornography. And the channel is two-way, of course: sensitive corporate data leaving the confines of the firewall – whether through malice or innocence – can have disastrous consequences. There is also the question of bandwidth management. Bandwidth may have become virtually a commodity, but in all companies, there is never enough. In many ways, monitoring the cost of user Internet access is almost as important as finding out what they’re doing.

One solution is to prevent all Internet access and shield the corporate network and its users behind a closed firewall, but this is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A better solution is obviously to ensure that only users with a business need have access to the Internet – but even those users may be tempted to stray from the straight and narrow. Perhaps the best solution is to invest in a method of both monitoring and tracking who accesses what and when. Potentially damaging situations can hopefully be headed off at the pass; if not, there is an audit trail to ensure that the guilty parties are identified. This information can then be used to fine-tune individual usage through policy management and the configuration of the firewall. And thankfully, there are now products on the market which can do exactly that.

A recent arrival in this important niche is CyberGuard, with a product that promises to do just that for your enterprise. CyberGuard is getting an excellent reputation for producing high quality industrial strength firewalls, but CSMART (which stands for centralized solution for monitoring, auditing, reporting and tracking) is a welcome diversification into the world of Internet usage monitoring, and definitely matches the high standard of its hardware and other software products.

Following an extremely simple installation, configuration is very easy: we had the application up and running within five minutes across a small network. For larger organizations, individuals can be grouped into hierarchies of departments and divisions, allowing administrators to monitor the general usage trends at a glance.

At the core of CSMART are the reporting tools, and the range of these available is very impressive. Initial tailoring of the reports to your individual needs is simplicity itself; the report definition functions are straightforward to use, allowing you to see the information in both graphical and alphanumeric format. You can also enforce a large number of filters. These can ensure that access to some web sites can be ignored (for example, the corporate web site or possibly a permitted news site), as well as defining the days and time periods during which employees can access the Internet, and the sizes of files being transferred that should be flagged for further investigation.

For example, you can receive a list of all web sites accessed by each employee. You can also configure CSMART to monitor other user activities, such as streaming media, instant messaging, or game playing – and if anyone has worked in an office where a Quake addiction has broken out, this could be very useful. Email, web and non-web usage can be measured, as well as the busiest email users, including the email addresses contacted – a very good method of checking for non-business use. CSMART can effectively monitor all access to the Internet at various levels of detail and let you know exactly what your employees are up to.

For the majority of these reports, CSMART will also give you a cost breakdown, showing you exactly how much your corporate Internet access is costing you. From this, you can calculate the cost savings that policy enforcement and firewall reconfiguration will offer – possibly the justification you need to persuade the IT director to spare the people and budget to carry that out. The reports can be distributed to the necessary users in a number of ways, either immediately, or at regularly scheduled intervals. In both chart and report format, they can be output onscreen, sent as emails, saved to disk or printed, or even as HTML pages.

Although CSMART is a very intuitive tool both to install and use, the level of documentation was still pretty comprehensive. The online help and wizards were also thorough, but the manual is a comprehensive user guide, and was welcome. There is also a concise data sheet.

According to the company, a supplemental product CD containing a copy of CSMART is now provided with every CyberGuard firewall/VPN appliance. Customers are therefore able to evaluate the product for themselves prior to making any decision.

Given the importance of continued Internet usage, the development of a product that can ensure that your employees are not misusing their access is vital, if not critical, especially given the increasing number of data protection laws that hold companies responsible for their employees’ actions. CSMART is an extremely useful and very usable solution to that, offering not only monitoring at whichever level is required, but also providing a detailed audit trail – something which is becoming not just useful, but a legal necessity.
 

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