If you are reading this article, odds are you are doing it while at work, using your company’s Internet connection to do so. For every web site you visit for content related to your job, you can bet there’s a large percentage of your coworkers also accessing the Internet at this exact moment, and many of them are not looking at content that is strictly related to their job. Ensuring the web security of your business is a critical component of your ongoing responsibilities, and there are four essential practices you should follow to ensure your business web security.

1. Develop an Acceptable Use Policy
You cannot say what is and is not allowed until you have a policy document that defines exactly that. Work with IT HR, and management to develop an acceptable use policy for Internet access, publish it in your employee manual and on your internal portal, and make sure all employees are required to read and acknowledge it. This first, most critical part of your web security, will be the basis for everything else you do.

2. Patch Your Systems
Exploits can take many forms and most often will take advantage of vulnerabilities in web browsers or the various software that helps display content within those browsers or that lets users work with files they have downloaded. The easiest and most effective thing you can do to enhance your web security is to ensure you patch your operating systems, browsers, and all the applications your users work with to minimize the risks to your web security.

3. Run Antivirus Software
Workstations are where almost all security incidents start. Whether a user accesses a compromised site or downloads an infected file, that’s where the problems start. While patching is a critical part of your web security, patches only come out after a vulnerability is discovered, and it takes time to develop and test a patch, let alone deploy it. Malware signatures can be developed and updated much more quickly, and keeping up to date antivirus software on your servers and workstations just makes sense.

4. Deploy a Web Security Solution
Security is a practice of layers, and web security requires several layers to ensure that you have done everything you can to protect your company and your users. A web security solution will offer several overlapping and critical additions to your web security, including malware filtering to further protect your users who access the Internet, category blocking to prevent access to sites not appropriate for business, bandwidth and usage restriction to help make sure Internet access doesn’t become a drain on productivity, and monitoring so you can know what’s happening with your users and on your network.

5. Educate Your Users
The last, best line of defense for your web security is your users. They are the ones opening browsers, conducting web searches, clicking on results, reading emails and deciding whether or not to follow links, and will know if and when they do something that is perhaps strange, or different from normal. Educating your users empowers them to help you protect your company and your coworkers, and is more than just sending out emails telling them what they should not do. Invest time in developing good training content that makes clear what your Acceptable Use Policy is for. Provide ways for users to request changes or exceptions, and to make suggestions. Ensure they understand why they should or should not do certain things, and how to get help when accidents happen (and they will happen, I assure you of that!) Work with your users, not against them, and you will have the best chance for success with your web security program.

Adopt these five essential practices to ensure your business web security and you will be well on your way to a safe and secure network that still empowers your users and permits them a degree of freedom on the Internet. Your uptime and productivity will be assured, and morale will benefit as well. Web security is a critical part of the overall information security for your network, but it doesn’t have to mean no one is permitted to surf the web. Combining policy, education, patching and antivirus with a strong web security solution is the best way to secure your network.

This guest post was written by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is the provider for web security solution, GFI WebMonitor: http://www.gfi.com/internet-monitoring-software

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.