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 Is it okay for employees to spend time on social networking sites, shopping online or downloading pirated music? What are the risks associated with web surfing?
Every company is unique and may have different ideas as to what is appropriate when it comes to employee internet usage. There is a balance between monitoring and blocking web use in the workplace. IT Managers need to determine the best way to deal with employee internet access, while keeping the overall good of the business a priority.
Internet Use and Misuse
Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to send the occasional personal email at work? What about a little internet shopping or spending sometime on social networking sites, playing online games, downloading pirated movies and music, gambling or downloading porn? The internet has created new opportunities for mischief and new challenges for managers.
Worldwide worries
In today’s office enviornment, employers have a relatively new issue to deal with; employees wasting time online and putting your business at risk. A large proportion of corporate web traffic is non-work related: gambling, music downloads, personal webmail, social networking and even pornography sites.
According The ePolicy Institute, of the 30% of bosses who terminated employees for web violations in 2007, 84% cited the viewing, downloading or uploading of pornography and otherwise offensive or inappropriate material as the reason.
Web misuse can have serious implications for your business:
• Reduced productivity. If employees spend their time on a social networking sites such as Facebook, they’re not spending it doing their job.
• Security problems. Malware hides on websites and can install itself as users browse infected pages. MessageLabs Intelligence reports that the number of new, malicious websites blocked each day by MessageLabs nearly doubled (91 percent) in just one month with 3,968 new sites intercepted daily.
• Legal risks. When users download inappropriate material to their computers other employees may take serious offense which in turn can create legal liabilities for managers.
• Wasted bandwidth. Internet connections cost money. If half your bandwidth is taken up with non-work relatd web traffic, you could potentially be paying twice as much as you need to and your business-critical communications could be running at half their speed capacity.
• Unlicensed software. When users download and install software from the internet, they create a legal risk. Software piracy is illegal. If an organization uses illegal copies of software, it may face a civil suit and company directors risk criminal penalties.
• Reputation risk. Social networking can create opportunities for employees to leak confidential information or spread damaging rumors online. Bad behavior by a single employee can reflect on the reputation of the whole organization.
Request Your Free White Paper: "Employee Web Use and Misuse: Companies, Their Employees and the Internet"
Download this white paper to help make an informed decision about your own web monitoring requirements.
Geographic Eligibility: USA
A MessageLabs Whitepaper; October 08
MessageLabs Web Security service gives companies the ability to monitor and enforce their internet usage policies.
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