Limit the World Cup's impact on your WANs

Hawthorn: Consider the impact this summer could have on the network

With the World Cup in full swing, football fanatics around the world are glued to their TVs, PCs or mobile devices to access footage of the games. This tournament provides coverage like never before, with the BBC and ITV streaming games online simultaneously with TV coverage.

IT managers from organisations of all sizes up and down the UK should be alert to a potential drain on employee performance and productivity, but also be aware of the greater threat: the impact on other applications, especially in branch offices.

The added load of multiple instances of a live match stream could swamp the WAN links to branch offices, making business-critical applications and communication slow or stop completely. Performance of remotely hosted applications and files is sluggish at best, requiring WAN optimisation solutions to compensate for burgeoning network limitations.

Simply blocking all access is unlikely to work. Users will search for alternative options, often leading to more danger, as cybercriminals will try to entice the unwary to their malware sites. As with every major event, malware writers are quick to take advantage and capture unsuspecting users.

There are a number of approaches that IT managers can take to ensure that their business applications and internet gateway are fully available.

IT management can improve their network infrastructure to enhance stream traffic delivery while reducing network traffic by splitting one live stream across the WAN to multiple users or by caching streams for later viewing.

Bandwidth management devices can also be set to define one stream provider as approved and given a high priority (management then encourage employees to use that stream), other streams are lower priority or blocked.

Email attachments containing World Cup-related headlines also pose serious threats to the network, designed to entice users to rogue sites. Users should be educated to only access trusted sites and avoid clicking through search engine results, as others may well be infected with malicious links.

IT departments should deploy secure web gateway systems that block executable downloads from unrecognised sites, scan incoming traffic at the WAN gateway to not only protect the employees’ privacy but to defend the business network and organisation’s data.

The World Cup only comes around once every four years, and while we all want to keep abreast of the latest action, organisations should stop and consider the impact this summer could have on their network.

Nigel Hawthorn from Blue Coat Systems is a BCS contributor