Businesses Failing to Control Internet Use
Updated June 26, 2008 - Research conducted last year by Dynamic Markets for Websense found that
employees in small and medium sized businesses in Europe averaged almost two hours a day on the Internet, with half an hour
on non-work-related sites.
Nearly one-third (31%) of employees in the survey said they accessed websites known to be high security risks,
including:
- peer-to-peer (25%) sites, and
- free software download sites (17%)
Yet fewer than half (47%) of surveyed European IT managers used web-filtering techniques
to protect their computers from malicious or virus-ridden sites. Employees are also relatively careless in their use
of work computers, trusting IT departments to protect them from security threats. Less than a third (31%)
of those who had used their personal credit cards at work claimed to have asked their IT departments about the risk
of identity theft.
Almost a quarter (23%) of SMEs surveyed had Internet use policies in place but did
not require employees to officially sign the policy. Another 16%
did not have a usage policy at all, placing trust in their employees not to misuse Internet access.
Company policies ignored
A survey in 2005 by network security provider
SmoothWall found that employees were ignoring their organizations' Internet Acceptable
Usage Policies (AUPs) according to a survey . Seven out of 10 companies recognise that a AUP is crucial
to the security of their IT systems, but 38% of employees governed by such policies
claim not to know the rules.
Three hundred business users were polled during November 2005 on
their Internet usage at work. 85% said they regularly visited news sites and 40% shopped online
from work while 37% used eBay and other auction sites.
61% of those surveyed used personal email systems such as GMail or Hotmail
at work and 41% admitted to using instant messaging applications such as Microsoft
Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to contact friends and family. Skype is rapidly gaining
popularity with 23% using it at work - presumably having loaded the Skype client on to their employers'
computers.
"Employees are failing to take notice of the high profile incidents of
employees being dismissed for accessing pornography at work, as more than a third of
respondents said that they were aware of pornography being downloaded within their
organization," said George Lungley, managing director, SmoothWall.
Most organizations are prepared to allow some nonwork-related
Web browsing, but the survey indicates far more than incidental usage. Over a third of
individuals surveyed admitted to spending more than 30 minutes of each working day accessing
nonwork-related Web sites - and 22% spent over an hour per day. A mere 15%
said they only accessed nonwork-related websites during their lunch break
or outside core working hours.
Astonishingly, almost a third (31%) of respondents said they occasionally downloaded music or
videos at work, and 8% confessed to do so regularly. Downloading such large files uses large amounts of
Internet bandwidth and, according to SmoothWall, employers could be considered to be complicit to any violation of
copyright law.
"Companies are obviously still not enforcing Internet usage policies.
We recommend locking down corporate networks to all but essential business applications
and strictly controlling access to nonwork-related Web sites during working hours,"
George Lungley said.
In businesses where an AUP was enforced, the survey found that:
- 19% said the policy was enforced by software control
- 13% said the policy was enforced by management checks and
- 28% by a combination of software and management controls
- 40% of respondents said that an AUP was in place but was not enforced
SmoothWall recommended that businesses prevent the use of nonwork-related applications at
work to:
- ensure legal compliance
- avoid time wasting Web browsing of nonwork-related sites, and
- prevent the risk of malicious Web sites infecting PCs with spyware and viruses
Also on this subject:
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Internet Use
