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News11th May 2004The subject of surfing the web at work, and providing employees with internet access, is both serious and sensitive. Most organisations are aware of the threats that connection to the internet poses to their day to day business and have taken some steps to reduce their exposure by deploying web blocking or web filters on the company networks. Web Blockers usually comprise a comprehensive, categorised list of web site URL's to which access may be selectively granted or denied. But are corporations explaining the risks and rationale for blocking adequately to their employees? Recent analysis undertaken by Netintelligence suggests that what employees consider to be acceptable web sites to visit during working hours differs somewhat from their employers views. Netintelligence has recently analysed the ‘unblock’ requests from installations where Netintelligence has been deployed to highlight this issue of communicating policy effectively. Table 1: Categories of Web Sites Blocked by Netintelligence and % of people requesting access to them
Interestingly, some people have differing ides about the terms ‘legitimate’ and ‘work related’. Netintelligence has compiled a ‘top 15’ list of the more extreme actual reasons to have a site ‘reclassified or unblocked’ by companies using the Netintelligence Web Filter this month. Table 2: Actual Reasons for requesting access to blocked sites.
“It is safe to assume that most reasonable employees would understand why browsing adult content sites at work is unacceptable, but judging from our data this month, it would appear that playing games and receiving private e-mail is considered a legitimate use of the company network” adds Worms. “It may be of benefit to corporations, to explain clearly that web mail can infect the company network with viruses etc and that game playing uses up bandwidth and can eventually slow down critical business systems such as e-mail and CRM”. “We are finding that a very small minority of employees are abusing the corporate network which then results in blanket bans or restrictions being imposed which can then have a detrimental effect on other employees. To address these issues and too effectively enforce company policies, organisations need tools, such as Netintelligence, that will report accurately what use is being made of these resources and by whom. This information needs to be made available to Managers who can then place the employee’s activity in the correct business context.”
For further information, please contact: Press Officer |
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