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I just don't think this is realistic. What if you had your phone on, connected to their Wifi and had a browser open to Facebook for the entire day but weren't actively surfing the 'net? That might falsely show you were online for the entire day but you weren't actually browsing. Or how about on an app? Again, while I realize that it CAN be done, I do not think this WOULD be done in very many circumstances.
Would you want to be on an adult site at work? No. Dating site? No. ESPN.com? Sure, not going to hurt you for a few minutes here at there.
That isn't how the technology works. It would show the IP address of xxx.xxx.x.x is accessing Facebook and only used a very small amount of bandwidth compared to someone who is using it 4 hours a day. So if person A opened Facebook in a web browser or app on their cell phone and left it like that all day not using it, and person B did the same but used it for 4 hours, it would show bandwidth consumption was high on person B.
In running computer networks, in order to properly trouble-shoot them and capacity planning they need to be collecting data on its usage constantly. Only if there is an issue or directed by management would they look more closely, but the data has to already be there. What they collect might get purged automatically every week or month, but it is there if needed.
Dating site is bad, but ESPN is OK? Wasting time with sports is wasting time. Sorry, but it makes no difference, if you are abusing the network that's all they care about.
I would just basically assume that anything/everything you're doing on your cellphone while connected at an office wifi will be tracked. Best to always err on the side of safety. While I firmly believe 99.9% of the time you'd be safe, I wouldn't want to be that one person who gets nabbed for being on Tinder for 4 hours one afternoon.
If you absolutely HAD to be on some website that you think might get you flagged, turn off the wifi and go over cell towers while going "incognito" on your phone.
Again, if they are going to look into it, they don't care what you are using it for provided it isn't illegal. Data is always being collected and disk space is cheap. Just remember that. They might archive it for as long as they have disk space to keep it.
That isn't how the technology works. It would show the IP address of xxx.xxx.x.x is accessing Facebook and only used a very small amount of bandwidth compared to someone who is using it 4 hours a day. So if person A opened Facebook in a web browser or app on their cell phone and left it like that all day not using it, and person B did the same but used it for 4 hours, it would show bandwidth consumption was high on person B.
In running computer networks, in order to properly trouble-shoot them and capacity planning they need to be collecting data on its usage constantly. Only if there is an issue or directed by management would they look more closely, but the data has to already be there. What they collect might get purged automatically every week or month, but it is there if needed.
Dating site is bad, but ESPN is OK? Wasting time with sports is wasting time. Sorry, but it makes no difference, if you are abusing the network that's all they care about.
Apps and websites (left open) download stuff in the background all the time. You don't have to be constantly using it. This depends on the site/app, of course.
I'm not talking about a hair salon with an open WiFi, I'm talking about a company with many employees and an IT department.
I work for a major hospital system with 15k+ employees and 300+ IT staff. We don't have the personnel to monitor internet access this closely. The guest network is a free for all. The infosec department is three guys. Webcat blocks certain sites, but you can surf C-D and Reddit to your heart's content. No one cares. We have bigger projects in the pipeline and not enough personnel for any of this.
I work for a major hospital system with 15k+ employees and 300+ IT staff. We don't have the personnel to monitor internet access this closely. The guest network is a free for all. The infosec department is three guys. Webcat blocks certain sites, but you can surf C-D and Reddit to your heart's content. No one cares. We have bigger projects in the pipeline and not enough personnel for any of this.
You don't need a lot of staff to monitor internet traffic. It's just tools that provide you with reports, alerts, etc. Not a big deal.
And therein lies the issue - people see "network monitoring" and the first thought might be "surveillance" or big brother stuff. When in fact, that may not be the intention at all. In most cases, "network monitoring" is more about performance monitoring. Is the router interface dropping packets? is the bandwidth being overutilized by a single source (maybe a malfunctioning process)? Is a line down? etc.
IT is there to provide services. What they key in on is ensuring those services are working as intended. And these tools help them in spotting potential issues or help them troubleshoot when things aren't working.
On the flip side, security tools are there to help them gain insight into threats and vulnerabilities. The key is to make sure threat actors out there can't easily come into your network as well as your intellectual property isn't walking away.
By nature of how these tools work, they certainly provide data that can be used to monitor the activities of the employees. But often, this is NOT the primary goal of these tools.
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