Main weaknesses were “log analysis granularity” and “frequency of URL list updates,” valuable information when selecting equipment

TOKYO—September 8, 2011—NetSTAR, Inc., Japan’s premier developer of URL filtering product technologies and services, today announced the release of the seventh annual Survey of Corporate Internet Administration Practices.

This survey investigates the administration and use of the Internet in the workplace, and it has been conducted by NetSTAR every year since 2004. On this, the seventh annual survey, we included network appliances and surveyed 515 system administrators who have in the past used URL filtering functions (services) on earlier equipment. The primary results of this survey are summarized below. (1) The reason for introducing appliances was to “increase routers” and “reduce costs.” In most cases, the functions they were interested in were firewalls, intrusion prevention, anti-virus features, and URL filtering.

The most common reason for introducing appliances was “we needed router functionality” (36.5%). However, the larger the company, the more often they answered “to reduce costs.” When introducing this equipment, the ranking of desirable functions was (from top to bottom) “firewall,” “intrusion protection,” “anti-virus features,” and “URL filtering.” (2) More than 70% answered that they will “select equipment that has filtering functions,” though more than 40% said they were “first-time users of filtering.”

More than 70% of respondents said that they selected an appliance to use its “filtering functions.” This trend became more pronounced as the size of the company increased. More respondents said that this was their “First time using filtering,” (43.9%), while next was “First time using an appliance” (35.7%). We learned that some companies decided to use filtering after introducing the appliance because they “expected synergies with other functions” (40%) or “felt that we needed more than just a firewall and anti-virus features” (28.5%). (3) More than 90% of respondents were satisfied with filtering, but the satisfaction with URL vendor lists varied.

The majority of respondents expected “strengthened security” (77.3%) by introducing filtering, while customer expectations were exceeded regarding “understanding Web usage” 20%. Though every brand of equipment was reportedly “slow with URL updates” and “did not filter as much as expected,” equipment that used foreign-made URL lists were overall five points higher in these categories. This must be kept in mind when selecting equipment.

NetSTAR will continue to work to understand the trends and needs of users, and we will reflect these in the technology and products that we develop.