How to create a streaming media policy
Bandwidth hogging can be a major concern in any organization. GFI WebMonitor can help you reduce the headaches associated with bandwidth intensive operations through appropriate blocking policies.
Streaming audio and video are bandwidth intensive. Coupled with the fact that this is not a temporary download, but can go on for extended periods of time, streaming media can quickly create bandwidth issues. Internet radio can easily be forgotten and you only require a few users to create a serious bottleneck. Websites in the News and Sports categories are also bandwidth intensive due to video streaming – and highly newsworthy events or sports events can create serious bandwidth issues.
For this purpose, we suggest you create a streaming media policy as described below:
1. Go to Manage > Policies.
2. Locate one of the existing blocking policies. Hold and drag to the middle of the UI and drop it over Drag policies here to clone.
3. In the Policy Name field, replace the existing name with Block streaming media.
4. In Policy Description, enter a description.
5. In the Block, Warn, Allow, Monitor element, select Block.
6. From the left sidebar, add the Websites element and block categories such as: Music, Entertainment/Venues/Activities, News , Peer to Peer / Torrents, YouTube and Streaming Media.
7. Add the Applications element and block the Streaming Media category.
NOTE
The policy we are creating blocks all users. If you wish to excludes specific users add the Users, Groups, IPs element to the policy.
8. Click Save.