Web use eating into work time

By ADAM GIFFORD

That quick jump on to the web to catch up with the latest news or the sports results, or book the weekend's entertainment ... It takes just a few minutes before you start work, you say. Makes you more productive.

How long? Two hours a week tops? According to your network administrator, it's more than six hours.

That's one of the findings of the fifth annual survey of workplace computing trends conducted by Harris Interactive for the United States employee internet management software vendor Websense.

The survey, of 500 workers and 350 IT managers of organisations with at least 100 employees, found if workers were forced to choose, more would give up their morning coffee than would give up being able to use the internet at work for personal reasons.

That shows how blurred the line is becoming between personal and business-related use of the web.

Even more worrying is the blase attitude to some of the creepy-crawly things out there on the web, including threats from spyware, unsanctioned instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and web-based viruses.

Almost 95 per cent of IT managers said they were confident their company's present antivirus software could stop viruses from attacking their network, yet two-thirds reported their network had been affected by a web-based virus such as Nimda or MyDoom, compared with only 45 per cent the previous year.

Although only 6 per cent of employees who access the internet at work said they had visited websites that contained spyware, 92 per cent of IT managers confessed that their organisation had been infected by spyware at some point.

Spyware started as a device used by authors of shareware to get some revenue by calling up banner advertisements to run on computers using their software. It has mutated into a potentially dangerous form of malware capable of sending confidential information about the user, the network or even keystrokes to a remote server.

Affected companies said an average of 29 per cent of their workstations had been infected by spyware, and 40 per cent of IT managers said the number of spyware-infected workstations at their organisation had increased.

Although few employees would admit to trying to hack into parts of their network, 34 per cent of managers said a a worker had launched a hacking tool within their network.

Then there are the other forms of entertainment. Some 22 per cent of male employees said they had visited a porn site while at work, and 13 per cent said it was intentionally.

The 12 per cent of women who said they had accessed pornography sites all said it was unintentional.

The majority of employees - 84 per cent - agreed it was unethical to download copyrighted content from peer-to-peer file-sharing websites, such as Kazaa or Grokster, while at work.

But IT managers estimate that 10 per cent of their company's total disk space is taken up by non-work related files, such as mp3 files, photos and movies.

The fact the majority of employees could get a faster connection to the internet than at home made web surfing at work an attractive proposition for many.

The most popular types of non-work related websites that employees access at work are news (84 per cent), travel (64 per cent), personal email (56 per cent), shopping (55 per cent) and online banking (53 per cent).

Men tend to engage more in personal surfing, with 64 per cent admitting accessing non-work related websites during work hours compared with 55 per cent of women. They are also over three times more likely than women to visit sports sites during working hours.

Tower chief information officer Ed Saul said private use of the internet in work time was a concern for any organisation, but it could be tolerated in moderation.

"We monitor web traffic. A small number of people like to surf a lot, others don't use it at all," Saul said. "If we pick up what we consider excessive use, we counsel the person that it is not appropriate, you have work to do."

Filters are used to make sure staff can't access sites deemed inappropriate.

Saul said Tower took data security seriously and had invested heavily in anti-intrusion and anti-virus technology.

"People invest money with our company. We are like a bank, but we need systems open to customers, so there are layers of security and firewalls."

www.websense.com