* Report says employees in the Netherlands spend almost an hour surfing World Cup sites
Although the primary threat to most organizations’ networks consists of e-mail-borne viruses, worms, and spam, Web surfing and the threats that arise from employee surfing can also have significant and negative impacts on the health of an organization’s infrastructure.
ScanSafe, a Web security company founded in 1999, publishes monthly statistics on Web-related threats. For example, the company sampled 1 billion-plus Web requests from the around the world in the week leading up to the FIFA World Cup and found that there was an increase of 147% to World Cup-oriented sites compared to the prior week. The company found that employees in the Netherlands spent 46 minutes per day searching these types of sites, or nearly 10% of a typical workday. By contrast, American workers spent only four minutes per day surfing World Cup-related sites. ScanSafe also reported that 28% of Web surfers spend nearly an hour every day on Web surfing that is not related to their job.
Of much greater concern, however, is the fact that ScanSafe discovered a 20% increase in Web viruses in May 2006 compared to the previous month, as well as a 9% increase in spyware from April to May.
In our just completed study on messaging security, Osterman Research found that 68% of organizations will likely or definitely invest in capabilities to block spyware; 54% of organizations have had a virus, worm or Trojan horse enter their network through the Web; and 34% of organizations feel that the viewing of inappropriate content on the Web is a serious or very serious problem.
In short, organizations large and small need to pay serious attention to how the Web is used in their organization.
