I was presenting in Atlanta recently and asked two IT professionals in the audience to estimate how much of their time is spent fixing problems that their own users created. The first IT professional said, “75%!” The second professional said, “At least that much for me!”

It is a sad fact that, unless you have the proper safeguards in place, your end users are using up an enormous amount of your IT department’s time. This costs your organization money. Not just in pay to your IT professionals, but also in downtime, upset customers, and maybe even damage to your branding.

There are many tools to restrict users and your qualified IT professionals know about them. Group Policy Objects, for example, are already included in your Windows server operating systems so there is “nothing more to buy” to begin restricting users. There are also Internet content filters – both free and reasonably priced options.

Restriction can be granular in case your CFO wants to listen to internet radio but does not want anyone else to be able to use up bandwidth in this way.  You can start by restricting a small group of users and expand your restrictions as you streamline your protection.