Websense India conducted ECRA survey (Employee Computing Risk Assessment) across 30 organizations across India covering around 40,000 employees (wide range of sectors including IT/ ITeS, Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, BFSI and Education)vand here are some interesting findings:
Productivity Loss
- General Mail – web based (51134 hrs), Instant Messaging (44495 hrs), News and Media (31237 hrs), Social Networking (19886 hrs), Online Brokerage and Trading (15193 hrs) emerged as top 5 non business surfing categories by time
- Websense monitored a total time loss of 211338 hours by 40,000 employees in surfing non-business websites as categorized by organizations
- The average employee frittered away 5.3 hours/ week, not including lunch and scheduled break-time, just in non-business internet surfing
- IT/ ITeS recorded the highest employee productivity loss ( 9.3 hours / week) followed by Pharma (4.41 hours/ week) and Manufacturing (4.2 hours/ week)
- Productivity loss per employee was highest in medium organizations (6.2 hours/ week) followed by larger organizations (5.5 hours/ week)
Network Bandwidth Loss
Internet usage in the enterprise directly impacts network resources by affecting quality of service and incurring additional hardware expenses. Areas in which these expenses accumulate include Internet Bandwidth, Network Storage, Cache and Proxy Hardware, and Desktop Storage.
- Websense monitored a total Bandwidth loss of 805,552,744 KB (805 GB) in just 7 days in 30 organisations
- Streaming Media (233 GB), Personal Network Storage & Backup (201 GB), Advertisements (144 GB) and Freeware and Software Download (142 GB) emerged as top network bandwidth drainers
- IT/ ITeS (250 GB), BFSI (160 GB) and Manufacturing (155 GB) emerged as top 3 bandwidth consuming verticals*
- Streaming Media (53 GB), Personal Network Storage & Backup (65 GB), Freeware and Software Download (66 GB) emerged as top 3 bandwidth consuming categories in IT/ITeS segment
- Advertisements (35 GB), Streaming Media (55 GB), Personal Network Storage & Backup (46 GB) emerged as top 3 bandwidth consuming categories in Manufacturing segment
- Advertisements (26 GB), Streaming Media (50 GB), Personal Network Storage & Backup (37 GB) emerged as top 3 bandwidth consuming categories in BFSI segment
Security Risks
The importance of adapting and responding in real-time, to trends and threats in a Web 2.0 world, was evident during these assesments. Malicious Web Sites are Internet sites containing Malicious Mobile Code (MMC), such as viruses, Trojan Horses, worms, script attacks. They can be either dedicated phishing / pharming pages or in many cases reputable sites that had been compromised with hidden malicious code. Web based threats can cost enterprises millions of dollars in lost productivity, and repair costs.
- The survey revealed that infected Internet sites were regularly accessed by all companies.
- Websense monitored 7,625,796 visits to URLs which hosted malicious code
- Freeware and Software Download, Malicious Web Sites, Potentially Unwanted Software, Proxy Avoidance, Peer-to-Peer File Sharing emerged as top five security concerns of the organizations
- Proxy Avoidance (48% of total visits) followed by Freeware and Software download (37% of total visits) accounted for most number of visits to the security risk sites by the employees
- Freeware and Software Download accounted for biggest security concern for Small organizations (81% of total visits) and Education segment (53% of total visits)
- In IT/ ITeS, Proxy Avoidance (59% of total visits) and Freeware and Software Download (32% of total visits) emerged as biggest security concerns
Legal Liability
While the Internet provides many benefits, Companies also need to prevent access to inappropriate as well as malicious content. Internet-related legal liability risks may appear in many different forms, however, the most common potential risks come from pornography, software downloads, peer-to-peer media, and online gambling.
- Peer-to-Peer File Sharing, Adult Material (Adult Content), Proxy Avoidance, Illegal or Questionable, Gambling, Hacking, Adult Material (Sex) emerged as top legal liabilities issues for organisations
- Websense monitored 2,531,812 visits to URLs with legal liability issues
- Visits to Proxy Avoidance sites (50% of the total visits to legal liability sites) and Adult Material (44% of the total visits) accounted for most of the legal liability issues
- Employees visiting Adult Material sites accessing adult content and sex emerged as biggest legal liability issue for Small sized organizations (65% of total visits) and Medium sized organizations (49% of total visits)
- Visits to Proxy Avoidance sites by employees in IT/ ITeS segment (89% of total visits) and large organizations (55% of total visits) emerged as biggest legal liability issue
- Adult Material (both Adult Content and Sex) sites accounted for most numbers of visits in legal liability by employees in BFSI (97% of total visits) and Pharma (89% of total visits) segment
*Highest concentration of employees monitored is also in these segments
What’s your take on this survey? Enough pointers to block Internet @ workplace?
Hi,
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Blocking internet at workplace won’t be an easy task as some way or the other internet is being used for official work as well. yes Access to limited sites, related to their work should be given.
Secondly, managers should keep an eye and motivate the employees to focus on the job in hand
Thanks
Do you really think blocking the internet access would suddenly make productivity jump sky high ? This is complete bull by Websense. They are serving these numbers to top bosses to sell their product. I used to work in a manufacturing company before shifting to IT. I used to spend most of my time on internet doing nothing. I still spend almost the same amount of time here(mostly work related) but the difference is that my productivity is an order of magnitude higher here. It is nothing to do with the internet access (which BTW was blocked at the earlier company using websense but we used to find holes quiet regularly). My motivation to work is much higher here and hence the productivity.
It doesn’t matter if this is blocked via Websense, nowadays they have portable broadband modem, you can still plug that via USB and go-online to whatever you need to. There’s no blocking the way of how employees spend their time. the most important thing is if the work is done, who cares how he/she spends that 8 hour in the office?
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