Internet Abuse in the Workplace and How to Combat it

Internet access is a vital business necessity today and is becoming irreplaceable as a work tool for today's wired worker.

Internet usage control

For many employees, unfortunately, the Internet has also become an irresistible source of goof-off during office hours. Today, the majority of employees spend anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour every work day surfing sites unrelated to their jobs using their work computers to book tickets, shop for clothes, or read online newspapers. Employees spend an incredible amount of time on the Internet, an annual cost of billions dollars.

Internet Use Survey - Trends and Surprises in Workplace Web Use

How much time do you spend online surfing non-related work sites?

Internet Use Survey - Trends and Surprises in Workplace Web Use

According to the recent Vault's survey "Internet Use in the Workplace":

  • 87% of employees surf non-work-related websites while at work, and of this 87%, 53% engage in personal web surfing every day
  • A majority of employees (56%) do not worry about their email or Internet use being monitored at work
  • Only 35% of employees believe that surfing the Internet or sending non-work-related emails decreases productivity

According to the survey, the most popular personal uses of the Internet at work were news sites (82%), map and driving directions sites  (80%) and weather sites (75%).

Internet access security

Workers who abuse Internet and e-mail privileges while on the job are not just wasting your time and money; they are putting your network in jeopardy by exposing your organization to e-mail viruses, hogging bandwidth by downloading MP3 files, and opening your entire network to security holes. Massive streaming audio and video files can put a strain on network resources.

If all that were not enough, uncontrolled Internet access lets employees view objectionable content that can create a hostile environment for other workers and increase your company's legal liability.

Managing Internet access is essential for every business, especially in light of today's increasing regulatory requirements.

UserGate makes Internet usage policies simple. With UserGate Proxy you can set different monthly or daily traffic quotas for each of your internet users. You can always see the traffic consumed, calculate its cost and set flexible restrictions. For example, you can configure UserGate so your users can continue using all e-mail protocols even after exceeding their monthly traffic quota.

Download UserGate Proxy & Firewall 5.1

You can download UserGate Proxy & Firewall here.

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Please, use our contact page in the case of any technical or pre-sales questions. We also advise using our forum to search for answers to common questions.

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