Using YouTube at the office is often viewed negatively, both because of it results in heavy bandwidth consumption, and in reduced employee productivity. At the same time, YouTube is a huge digital library where it is possible to access content on almost any subject.
In today’s fast-moving business scenario, YouTube is one of the best platforms to enhance knowledge and skills. While lectures and training may tend to get boring, digital learning is a great way to build interest. YouTube has an enormous range of content from various categories.
Training and development is a department for which YouTube is an essential and effective resource. Trainers can train employees with e-learning videos from YouTube at no cost, and can also recommend videos related to their work and skills to help them perform better.
So completely blocking access to YouTube is not the right solution either, since you will end up restricting the biggest learning platform for your employees.
Providing access to or blocking YouTube tends to be viewed to be an all or nothing exercise – but there is a middle path. Implementing a YouTube filtering solution on your cloud can get you the best of both worlds.
What is YouTube Filtering?
YouTube Filtering is an interesting feature of select Identity and Access Management solutions, which can whitelist specific videos from YouTube based on categories and channels.
YouTube filtering restricts people from accessing irrelevant content on YouTube. Restricted and Moderate Restricted modes can also be activated using a YouTube filter – the Restricted mode helps to block all 18+ content from YouTube while the Moderate Restricted mode prevents employees from liking, commenting on or sharing videos.
How does it work?
YouTube Filtering works with the help of a proxy server which reads the metadata consisting of the channel name, category, channel ID, file name and so on.
For instance, when the user is searching for a video on YouTube, the proxy server will read the metadata to confirm whether the channel is whitelisted, based on which it displays the video. If the channel is not whitelisted, an error is displayed to the user that access to the video is not permitted.
Leverage the power of YouTube for your organization without worrying about the downside with Akku’s YouTube Filtering feature.
