It’s that time of year again — the NCAA basketball tournament is upon us. This time of year always throws a spotlight on web filtering, as Enterprises are faced with the prospect of their employees frittering away time and valuable network bandwidth watching hoops.

The tools available on the Internet for following this year’s tournament are getting more varied and sophisticated, throwing open new security and bandwidth concerns, as well as raising the old specter of productivity problems.

Security

If you’re blocking your users from watching the tournament, then you’ve got to consider the ways that they might attempt to circumvent that policy. The key thing here is that video streaming isn’t just about web sites and media players anymore.

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The RIAA just won what is likely to be a landmark case in establishing the criteria for proving intent in serving copyrighted music over P2P networks. The RIAA has brought thousands of cases against individual users - this was the first one to go to a jury trial. And it raises the stakes surrounding any organization’s liability for ignoring P2P usage on their network.

This is best illustrated by example. I was reminded of a recent issue with an 8e6 customer that Tech Support brought me in on.

Our web filter blocks peer-to-peer applications via packet signatures. There are lots of good reasons to block P2P, but this customer purchased our product because their CIO was receiving emails like this (selected excerpts):

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