GFI WebMonitor Changelog

What's new in GFI WebMonitor 2013 Build 20130910

Feb 6, 2014
  • Remote filtering:
  • Company laptops should be used appropriately. GFIWebMonitor allows filtering policies to be applied even beyond the corporate network.

New in GFI WebMonitor 2012 R2 (Feb 6, 2014)

  • VIPRE Antivirus engine:
  • Download scanning is now powered by VIPRE in addition to BitDefender. For extra protection you can still add the optional Kaspersky engine.
  • Role-based access and delegated reporting:
  • GFI WebMonitor data is useful to several stakeholders such as people in IT, HR and Management. With role-based access you can now grant access to users to selective dashboards and reports, whilst limiting the visible data as necessary.
  • Social controls:
  • With GFI WebMonitor’s Social Controls feature, you will be able to block Facebook apps and games and other social networking site functions, such that you can control productivity without completely blocking the site.
  • Security dashboard:
  • Spot any security problems as they are happening and before it is too late. The new security dashboard gives you full visibility into results of virus detections, hits to malicious or phishing websites and other security issues.
  • Import/export configuration:
  • Using a command line tool it is now possible to export all configurations such that you can take effective backups and synchronize multiple installations of GFI WebMonitor
  • Performance, memory and other optimizations:
  • Various improvements to memory utilization, performance and other generic improvements and bug fixes.

New in GFI WebMonitor 2012 (Feb 6, 2014)

  • Brand new look for greater ease of use:
  • The latest version of GFI WebMonitor features a completely redesigned new look which is far easier to use and interact with. The new design gives you quicker access to what you need in a simpler, faster manner. The new look manifests itself in a series of changes throughout the product; including smart dashboards, policy screens and an in-built reporting engine.
  • Smart dashboards:
  • GFI WebMonitor 2012 makes it easy to give permission to selected users outside the IT department to generate and access reports thanks to the its brand new ‘Smart Dashboards’, which are grouped into three areas: Activity dashboards, bandwidth dashboards and real-time traffic dashboards.
  • Activity dashboards:
  • The activity dashboards present an interactive report showing browsing activity and surfing time, which allows users to drill down into specific details to analyze issues by
  • Seeing which categories are the highest productivity losers
  • Filtering by all activity/blocked activity
  • Listing the websites that are causing the highest productivity loss
  • Listing which users are spending too much time browsing non-productive websites
  • Revealing users who are visiting inappropriate websites
  • Offering an exact log of visits by website, category or user
  • Ranking users based on browsing activity
  • Highlighting peak browsing activity days.
  • Bandwidth dashboards:
  • These interactive dashboards reveal download and upload volumes to identify whether certain websites, categories or users are creating download or upload bottlenecks. The data can be analyzed in detail by
  • Showing which category is causing most bandwidth drain
  • Filtering by downloads and/or uploads
  • Revealing which users or websites are consuming too much bandwidth
  • Monitoring generic bandwidth trends and spikes
  • Predicting the consumption of bandwidth levels based on current activity
  • Highlighting peak bandwidth consumption days.
  • Real-time traffic dashboards:
  • Gone are the days when you had to wait for reports to be generated in retrospect: GFI WebMonitor 2012 introduces interactive display and filtering of data on real-time connections to give you the ability to drill down to categories, websites or users which are causing specific issues.
  • This dashboard also presents a visual representation of the activity going on at any given time, including a real-time graph of bandwidth consumption. You can monitor specific categories of connections and even terminate rogue ones at will – for example, if you happen to be alerted to a dubious download or streaming media connections.
  • Policy screens:
  • The new version of GFI WebMonitor facilitates the creation of policies by centralizing them in a single screen. You can now see all policy implementation details on one screen, without needing to switch tabs. It is also much easier to define policies by risk as categories have now been grouped by generic needs and functions, such as
  • Security
  • Productivity loss
  • Bandwidth control
  • Application or archive (for downloads).
  • Explore:
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  • download your FREE
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  • valid subscription are entitled
  • to a FREE upgrade
  • download the new version
  • Get a new key
  • and get a new key
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  • Customers without subscription - Get a new key
  • Customers without
  • a valid subscription who
  • wish to upgrade,
  • download the new version
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  • and renew your
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  • What's new in GFI WebMonitor® 2013?
  • Released: March 21, 2013
  • Remote filtering
  • Company laptops should be used appropriately. GFIWebMonitor allows filtering policies to be applied even beyond the corporate network.
  • Divider
  • What's new in GFI WebMonitor® 2012 R2?
  • Released: September 6, 2012
  • VIPRE® Antivirus engine
  • Download scanning is now powered by VIPRE in addition to BitDefender. For extra protection you can still add the optional Kaspersky engine.
  • Role-based access and delegated reporting
  • GFI WebMonitor data is useful to several stakeholders such as people in IT, HR and Management. With role-based access you can now grant access to users to selective dashboards and reports, whilst limiting the visible data as necessary.
  • Social controls
  • With GFI WebMonitor’s Social Controls feature, you will be able to block Facebook apps and games and other social networking site functions, such that you can control productivity without completely blocking the site.
  • Security dashboard
  • Spot any security problems as they are happening and before it is too late. The new security dashboard gives you full visibility into results of virus detections, hits to malicious or phishing websites and other security issues.
  • Import/export configuration
  • Using a command line tool it is now possible to export all configurations such that you can take effective backups and synchronize multiple installations of GFI WebMonitor
  • Performance, memory and other optimizations
  • Various improvements to memory utilization, performance and other generic improvements and bug fixes.
  • Divider
  • What's new in GFI WebMonitor™ 2012?
  • Released: March 8, 2012
  • GFI WebMonitor – All editions
  • Brand new look for greater ease of use
  • The latest version of GFI WebMonitor features a completely redesigned new look which is far easier to use and interact with. The new design gives you quicker access to what you need in a simpler, faster manner. The new look manifests itself in a series of changes throughout the product; including smart dashboards, policy screens and an in-built reporting engine.
  • Smart dashboards
  • GFI WebMonitor 2012 makes it easy to give permission to selected users outside the IT department to generate and access reports thanks to the its brand new ‘Smart Dashboards’, which are grouped into three areas: Activity dashboards, bandwidth dashboards and real-time traffic dashboards.
  • Activity dashboards
  • The activity dashboards present an interactive report showing browsing activity and surfing time, which allows users to drill down into specific details to analyze issues by:
  • Seeing which categories are the highest productivity losers
  • Filtering by all activity/blocked activity
  • Listing the websites that are causing the highest productivity loss
  • Listing which users are spending too much time browsing non-productive websites
  • Revealing users who are visiting inappropriate websites
  • Offering an exact log of visits by website, category or user
  • Ranking users based on browsing activity
  • Highlighting peak browsing activity days.
  • Bandwidth dashboards
  • These interactive dashboards reveal download and upload volumes to identify whether certain websites, categories or users are creating download or upload bottlenecks. The data can be analyzed in detail by:
  • Showing which category is causing most bandwidth drain
  • Filtering by downloads and/or uploads
  • Revealing which users or websites are consuming too much bandwidth
  • Monitoring generic bandwidth trends and spikes
  • Predicting the consumption of bandwidth levels based on current activity
  • Highlighting peak bandwidth consumption days.
  • Real-time traffic dashboards
  • Gone are the days when you had to wait for reports to be generated in retrospect: GFI WebMonitor 2012 introduces interactive display and filtering of data on real-time connections to give you the ability to drill down to categories, websites or users which are causing specific issues.
  • This dashboard also presents a visual representation of the activity going on at any given time, including a real-time graph of bandwidth consumption. You can monitor specific categories of connections and even terminate rogue ones at will – for example, if you happen to be alerted to a dubious download or streaming media connections.
  • Policy screens
  • The new version of GFI WebMonitor facilitates the creation of policies by centralizing them in a single screen. You can now see all policy implementation details on one screen, without needing to switch tabs. It is also much easier to define policies by risk as categories have now been grouped by generic needs and functions, such as:
  • Security
  • Productivity loss
  • Bandwidth control
  • Application or archive (for downloads).
  • In-built reporting engineL
  • The completely revamped interface now allows you to create reports based on the information you require without ever having to leave the main program. The new reporting engine makes it much easier to extract reports which only include the data you need, through the easy inclusion and exclusion of users, categories and websites.
  • The new reporting engine enables you to create
  • Department-based reports, which can be scheduled and sent to the relevant department heads
  • Reports which only include certain categories of websites
  • Reports which exclude certain data (such as salesforce.com or your corporate website)
  • Need-based reports, such as reports based on browsing activity/bandwidth /security. You can, for example, set GFI WebMonitor to automatically notify the IT administrator when somebody is hogging bandwidth; notify HR management if somebody is browsing job-search websites; or to notify a particular manager if somebody in their team is spending too much time on websites which are in the productivity-loss category. This way, each report is concise and relevant to the person who required it.
  • Schedules and to distribute reports in various formats.
  • Action-based alerts:
  • GFI WebMonitor 2012 makes it possible for you, or members of the management team, to receive alerts when specific issues arise. Its alerting features are very flexible, enabling you to set them up based on particular triggers, such as somebody browsing non-productive websites for long periods or an employee actively seeking a job.
  • SQL Server Support:
  • GFI WebMonitor now supports using SQL Server or SQL Server Express as its logging database. Although this is not a requirement, using a new or existing installation of SQL Server or SQL Server Express (which is free) provides improved performance for installations where high volumes of data are generated and retrieved.

New in GFI WebMonitor 2011 Build 20110218 (Mar 14, 2011)

  • Proxy Caching
  • GFI WebMonitor 2011 (standard version) implements caching such that files and other objects/resources are delivered to the end-user from a cache on the GFI WebMonitor machine when possible, thus improving end-users’ web browsing experience and reducing bandwidth consumption and associated costs.
  • HTTPS Scanning
  • GFI WebMonitor 2011 (standard version) can decrypt SSL-encrypted web traffic, scan its contents for malware, and re-encrypt it. This extends the granularity of filtering and control offered by GFI WebMonitor through download control and virus scanning policies to such encrypted traffic.
  • Time-based Browsing Policies
  • With GFI WebMonitor 2011, an administrator can define policies based on browsing time. For example, the administrator can allow User X to browse news category sites for only one hour per day. When users exceed their time allowance threshold, a notification page is displayed informing them that their permitted browsing time has been used up. These policies can help enhance employee productivity by enforcing control on the amount of time spent browsing the Internet.
  • Bandwidth-based Browsing Policies
  • GFI WebMonitor 2011 also allows the administrator to define policies based on bandwidth thresholds. For example, the administrator can allow User X to download a maximum of 100 MB per week. When users exceed their bandwidth threshold, a notification page is displayed informing them that their bandwidth quota for the defined period has been reached. Advanced options also allow the administrator to configure a bandwidth threshold for a particular category of users. This helps administrators in managing bandwidth usage by enforcing control on the amount of bandwidth consumed by users.
  • Improved Interactive Access and Blocked Activity Monitoring Reports
  • GFI WebMonitor 2011 allows one to interactively review the browsing habits of users with the ability to drill down by users, categories, domains and sites, in order to determine, for example, which site categories are being browsed by whom, which users are browsing most, etc. It is also possible to interactively drill down into the policy infringements trapped by GFI WebMonitor, with the ability to do this by users, categories, policy type and policies, in order to determine, for example, which category of sites has caused most policy breaches.

New in GFI WebMonitor 2009 SR3 Build 20091130 (Dec 4, 2009)

  • NEW: Introduced support for the new Kaspersky v8 engine
  • FIXED: WMonscat.exe process may crash when online lookups for Web categorization is enabled
  • FIXED: A memory leak may occur in WMonProc.exe process
  • FIXED: User and group resolution may not always work correctly for some built-in groups, such as Domain Users
  • FIXED: If user name contains extended ASCII characters (such as ñ, ? or ?) they may not be displayed correctly in the UI
  • FIXED: Antiphishing updates may fail to be downloaded

New in GFI WebMonitor 2009 SR2 Build 20090709 (Jul 18, 2009)

  • NEW: ‘Hidden Downloads’ to monitor processes downloading content in the background on the users’ computer
  • NEW: Added filtering and grouping options in real time reporting of "Bandwidth Consumption -> Top Sites"
  • NEW Real file type detection now supports Microsoft Silverlight
  • NEW: Microsoft MSN/Windows Live Messenger usage trend graph showing messages sent and received by each user over time
  • UPDATED: Better Microsoft ISA array support to remove the need for manual editing of files
  • UPDATED: Faster transfer of ReportPack data into Microsoft SQL Server

New in GFI WebMonitor 2009 SR1 Build 20090515 (May 27, 2009)

  • NEW: GFI WebMonitor user interface IP fields now also support IP ranges. Example: ‘192.168.0.100-200’
  • FIXED: In some situations, scheduled policies are active only for one hour after they have been created
  • FIXED: No refresh / restart of GFI WebMonitor user interface required when updating the license key
  • FIXED: Some valid license keys are not accepted by GFI WebMonitor
  • FIXED: Old entries are not removed from Anti-Phishing database in specific situations
  • FIXED: Improved handling of filenames with Unicode characters in download status window

New in GFI WebMonitor 4 Build 20081104 (Nov 8, 2008)

  • New Dashboard
  • Personalized web categories by adding in WebFiltering rule inclusion and exclusion site list
  • Support for multiple Active Directory domains within the same forest
  • Support for Local Users and Groups (non-Active Directory mode)
  • Real-time web category checking from the GFI WebMonitor Interface
  • Better support for Firefox, Opera and Chrome
  • Better notifications during the evaluation and before the subscription expires

New in GFI WebMonitor 4.0 Build 20070817 (Aug 22, 2007)

  • FIXED: Download control policy - 'Block all other files' option was not working
  • FIXED: Activity log was being corrupted by certain characters in URLs
  • FIXED: Microsoft Firewall Service crashed when a custom content-type is blocked
  • FIXED: Notifications for a successful WebGrade database updates were being sent even when this option was disabled
  • FIXED: Notifications were not being sent when a custom content-type was being triggered
  • FIXED: Anti-virus licensing status was being left empty
  • NEW: Introduction of support for upgrade over a previous build of GFI WebMonitor 4 with settings being preserved
  • NEW: Licensing has been implemented

New in GFI WebMonitor 4.0 Build 20070801 Beta 2 (Aug 8, 2007)

  • GFI WebMonitor for ISA Server 4 is now available in 3 editions:
  • WebFilter Edition � Includes URL filtering and website categorization
  • WebSecurity Edition � Includes anti-virus, anti-phishing and spyware detection
  • UnifiedProtection Edition � Packages both WebFilter and WebSecurity editions.
  • The new features available in GFI WebMonitor 4 (all editions) include:
  • WebGrade Database: GFI WebMonitor 4 comes with a human-reviewed site categorization database. This database allows users to set up filtering policies based on user/group/IP that specify who can access websites of which category. Websites can either be blocked or else allowed through with an appropriate warning/notification.
  • Time-based filtering: Each of the web-filtering policies may be configured to work on a time schedule. This means that administrators can configure the product to allow users/groups to access certain websites during specific time windows, for example, employees can be allowed to access news and entertainment websites during break time.
  • Anti-phishing: GFI WebMonitor 4 protects the users from the potential risks of social engineering by blocking access to phishing websites through an auto-updatable database of phishing URLs.
  • Anti-spyware: In addition to the multiple anti-virus engines provided with GFI WebMonitor 3, GFI WebMonitor 4 now also scans user downloads to block spyware infected files.
  • Quarantine: In addition to being blocked, with GFI WebMonitor 4, potentially hazardous files can now also be quarantined.
  • Download control policies: The administrator has the ability to create multiple user/group/IP based policies in order to block particular file-types from being downloaded by particular users.
  • File-type-based anti-virus scanning policies: The administrator can now define which anti-virus engine is used to scan which real file-types.
  • Whitelist and blacklist: Any URL/user/IP can be inserted permanently/temporarily to these lists in order to bypass all web filtering and web security policies.
  • Bandwidth monitoring: Through user and site bandwidth monitoring features, the administrator now has the ability to track download and upload traffic and the number of URL hits over time, either on a user basis or else on a website basis. Real-time monitoring may be achieved through drilldown reporting enhanced with graphs within the user interface.
  • Revamped user interface: The new GFI WebMonitor 4 user interface has been revamped for more convenient real-time monitoring and user-friendly configuration.