Im mailing this to myself at work, to distribute to the users on my network. With ISA sever up and running, it would be very easy to restrict internet access by group or individual user, only allow access to certain sites that are essential. That would really suck. Ive already had to limit the attachments somewhat. It would be a shame to have to restrict them further. But the director of MIS is really getting fed up with us having to chase virus’s down, not to mention they make us look bad.

Any suggestions in this area would be appreciated.


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Email, Web at Work - Is the Free Lunch Over?
Mon Mar 18, 9:25 AM ET

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Brace yourselves, corporate drones: one of the last bastions of work place relief -- sneaking in some online shopping or snickering over an email joke -- could be destined for universal banishment.

Major corporations are increasingly classifying employee email and Internet privileges as potential security hazards, distractions or worse, costly legal dangers in the making.
As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly reliant over the past few years.
To hear some of the more ardent computer security advocates tell it, the days of sneaking in some online shopping on company time, mass-emailing your pals a Flash-powered shoot-'em-up game or even downloading screensavers could be a thing of the past.

"It is drastic and painful," Raimund Genes, European president of anti-virus software manufacturer Trend Micro, told Reuters. "But I think it is necessary for the future."
The objective is clear, security advisers say.

A healthy dose of IT prevention can eradicate debilitating email-borne worms and limit the likeliness of employees using their speedy desktop Net connection to download copyright-protected tunes, thus triggering a lawsuit.

WHEN FIREWALLS JUST WON'T DO

"The message is: 'I'm afraid you'll have to do it after hours at home, which is where you should be doing it in the first place,"' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.

Hypponen added some Fortune 100 companies are looking to step up security measures beyond firewalls, which bar access to sites with racy or inflammatory content. They are looking to ban Internet usage for all but select, authorized personnel.

The biggest developments are around email prevention, experts say. Elaborate content filtering software, which can run upwards of $30,000 to install, can block all but the tamest incoming emails, and most attachments, said Trend Micro's Genes.
Corporations, particularly those that were stung hard by the wave of virus and worm attacks during the past two years, are considering it a top priority.
"We started full email and Web surfing prevention as a safety initiative in 1999," a chief security officer at one of Germany's largest employers, an energy firm, told Reuters.

ALPHABET SOUP OF RESTRICTIONS
For many employees at the company, Web surfing is confined to specially designated PCs, and the email server has been tailored to intercept incoming emails which contain a range of file attachments, he said.

Among the nearly 100 email attachments outlawed by the company are: screen savers, digital greeting cards, and the ubiquitous ".exe," or executable file, a standard format needed to run most computer applications and a common target for virus authors.

The security officer said employees are gradually adjusting to the strict policy. It has already scored points with management though, he said, as no virus or worm has infiltrated the firm's defenses during the past three years.

for full story:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...y_dc_1&cid=582