"Malhhari... Vat Lavli", the famous song of BajiraoMastani, in the backdrop of insane Revelry (booze and women) by soldiers to break free of a terrible, victorious encounter, seeded this thought in me.
We are far off from one to one hand-held weapons war with universally accepted rules of war-break from sunset to sunrise (read revelry, booze, women as incentives). These days, our war formats have changed to 24 X 7 hi-tech wars, where women are also soldiers.
When I see an urban, qualified, corporate employee, I can't stop myself comparing him / her with those old times soldiers who fight their heart and mind out to survive. Do they have a kind of war-break? If it can be, what kind of war-break could it be?
My team has come up with an innovative idea of online break. Let us understand the issue.
Our study suggest that in firewalled (read restricted and monitored internet access) office, employees crave to do following.
- Check personal banking
- Glance through personal social media (out of FoMo, Fear of Missing out)
- Check stock market, matrimonial, job sites notifications
- Data Leakage Prevention
- Check personal emails
- Explore online deals on Flipkarts and Amazons
The more the craving is, the more is the distraction.
Paradox is, enterprises cannot give unrestricted internet access to employees for 2 reasons.
- It may result in long time-pass
- Organization's business information(read confidential business data, design data, intellectual property) may be supplied to wrong hands through personal email, cloud drives etc.
TraditionallyBlackboxfirewalls are unable to solve the problem. If internet is restricted, inherent craving distracts the employees. If internet is not restricted, there can be serious threaton competitiveness of the enterprise.
My idea is, let us give them Online Break through "Happy Hours". Let's see how it may work.
Define one hour during the day as Happy Hour for online break. Employees are given facility to check-in to Happy Hour. Upon check-in, he / she gets unrestricted access to internet, but Data Theft Prevention enterprise data (read ERP, Emails, Documents, Designs etc) becomes vaulted. Employee can satiate his / her craving, get rejuvenated and go back to work, just by checking out. No risk of trespassing the enterprise data. As soon as employee checks-out of happy hour, your firewall is at the job as usual with all restrictions and enterprise data is un-vaulted.
There are such systems available to get it done.
It is all about accepting people as they are. Let's not try to change them.
They are today's soldiers, who desire a bit of "revelry" online. Allowing them to take an
online break for a bit of personal entertainment / satisfaction, without compromising on information security, is a win-win solution.