The FINANCIAL — The wide majority of organizations from private companies to state institutions block social networks and other internet content to their employees.
As they claim it hinders the quality of work in addition to IT security purposes – hence they are insuring themselves against any viruses, even by access to outer/private e-mails and other entertainments sites too.
Banks in Georgia don’t allow their employees (operators and other staff except from those that have direct online contact with customers) to access web resources. Social networks, entertainment websites, and private e-mails are inaccessible and prohibited while at work.
As Natia Gotsadze, TBC Bank PR Manager told us, bank personnel are prohibited from accessing social networks due to their workload and service responsibilities to customers. “In order to maintain the IT system’s safe and secure information, we also restrict access to outer (private) e-mails. In addition computers deny access to websites with high risk of virus penetration. The IT department also runs monitoring and periodic auditing of internet use,” said Gotsadze.
Similar steps are being taken at Bank of Georgia and Liberty Bank. As they claim internet access is restricted due to bank specifics although if a person is required to communicate via facebook or other networks then they’re separately allowed to do so.
Apart from banks companies like Wissol also have limitations accessing the web and social networks except for the marketing departments that work in the direction of public relations and corporate social responsibility. “We do intentionally block websites for our employees who are dealing with our customers on a daily basis,” said Rusudan Kbilashvili, PR Manager at Wissol Group.
As opposed to banks and private companies, some state organizations allow their employees access to informational sites only. Like at the Ministry of Finance of Georgia. As Keti Kiknadze said, observations proved that the use of social networks and entertainment websites hinders work effectiveness in addition to slowing down internet traffic.
As said by an anonymous source, police officers and all employees have access to only 2 websites, that of police.ge and pol.ge (the latter needing a special username). The Parliament of Georgia also has limitations to websites and social networks at large.
As Kote Mikeladze, IT specialist, told us, companies are spending thousands of dollars in order to get their network secure and it depends on what they want to monitor – if it is regarding blocking websites taht’s much easier, whilst monitoring the web and identifying viruses in the whole system costs relatively more. “Barracuda Networks for example is to monitor and block the latest internet threats. In addition it tells you which person is entering which website and whether it has a virus, etc. Another is also Kerio unified threat management fixed to server (24 port modem size) with its web-filters, they all perform the same function blocking access to certain sites preferred by the organization,” said Mikeladze.
(external link: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ ; http://www.kerio.com )
Education institutions like universities also restrict access to the web.
As Nino Giglemiani told The FINANCIAL even lecturers abstain from using facebook or other social networks. “At Tbilisi State University usage of social networks is prohibited. In most of the computers it’s blocked and if the curator sees that you’re using facebook or Odnoklassniki they’ll ask you to leave the resource centre. In the 4th Tbilisi state university building you’ll not be allowed to surf facebook. Students as well as lecturers are denied access to it,” noted Giglemiani.
Aside from TSU, IBSU (International Black Sea University) also takes measures to control internet access although facebook and information sites are still available for students to use for education purposes and research.
The company Beeline, as opposed to those listed above, allows its employees to use social networks at work, in addition to it being largely represented on social networks also. “Each of our employees has social networks’ contact info in their e-mail signatures and they quite actively use social networks to interact with customers on a daily basis. Only operators, busy dealing with people, don’t have access to the web, except for special programmes,” said Teona Bagdavadze, PR Manager at Beeline.
Despite restricting internet access to employees, Georgian companies started actively using internet based social networks for their marketing and PR purposes. Among those with the largest fan pages on facebook are Georgian banks.
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