NORTHLAND CORP, LEGRANGE, KY

Using WebSENSE to manage employee access to the Internet 

Northland Corporation, based in LeGrange KY, is a wholesaler of hardwood lumber to the wood manufacturing industry. Northland purchases wood from the mills and puts it through certain processes as demanded by its clients - processes such as kiln drying, grading and milling. Their product is then used by manufacturers to make fine furniture, kitchen cabinets, yachts and musical instruments.

To enhance employee productivity, Northland wanted to give the user base access to the internet for research as well as to communicate more efficiently with customers and vendors. The company installed a Microsoft Proxy server attached to the existing Hewlett Packard Unix server running X-Terminals with Motif Windows.

It was important to the company that internet access was to be enabled specifically for business use. The company published an Internet Policy, which was signed by each employee, that communicated the company's intent to monitor, block and report on the use of employee internet activity.

To help manage this process, the WebSENSE Internet Blocking Tool was purchased from ReSoft International. WEBsense holds a database of URL's categorized into 20 different areas. Of the 20 categories available, Northland initially blocked the key categories such as pornography, adult entertainment, job search and travel sites and worked through to fine tune the other categories to meet their needs.

The WebSENSE reporter is also used to send to each manager an activity summary of the use by their staff and helps to fine tune access policies.

Marlene Hughes, Corporate Services Director, says "We are delighted with WebSENSE. It performs exactly as advertised, was easy to install and use and allows us to explore using the internet in areas we had not previously considered while protecting us from potential legal risks and inappropriate activity".