Fact is most folks are pretty thick and havent a clue how the internet works or how it can be monitored over a network.

However, firms rarely put any clauses into work contracts advising internet use so it's difficult to do anything and any company with more than 300 staff just doesnt have the time to have someone gtazing over internet logs for all the staff checking whats going on.

So every now and then you pick a chump at random to make an example of. Usage drops for a few days in the depts that hear of it and then goes back to normal.

I must admit if I was in charge of IT I would block Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/most known proxies et al as matter of course. If they needed it I'd want to see them put a valid business case in and die laughing watching them.

RE:"INSECURITY FIRM Scansafe is reporting a 55 per cent increase in the number of workers attempting to download illegal material at work."

Now this is a laugh. What the h3ll is "illegal"? Is this akin to "You have attempted and illegal operation...."?

Based on their flawed analysis and ignorant comments, it's obvious these people are not just idiots, they are grossly incompetent. Any company that takes them seriously gets what they deserve.

I once worked for a publishing company that leased computers to the USAF (so they could write their forces air paper that we published) and our company would just download the illegal software that the USAF required to be on those computers. I would guess that part of this illegal downloading is down to company not wanting to spend the dosh to buy the software!

"workers shouldn't have internet access"

Dude, you must be a friggin idiot! Some of us actually "use" the internet to do our job.....

Where do you work, McDonalds?

Workers should not have internet access in their office. They should only be able to access servers that are used by the company. Everything else should be automatically denied. Giving people internet access at all is a huge move of stupidity for both security and productivity reasons.

//It also recommends that companies should adopt technology to stop it from happening in the first place//

So it would appear that Scansoft/Cisco just happen to be in the business of being able to sell you that technology.

that said, people are probably that stupid to be downloading stuff they shouldnt at work. we sacked people at a "big six" IT company for keeping porn on the customer IT Network.....

The offenders fell foul of the fact that (a) they were stupid, (b) acceptable use policeis were just developing, (c) its covered by gross misconduct policies anyway....

and best of all, at the IT company we didnt scan or do checks for porn, jpgs, mpgs etc....

however, the customer did... so a double whammy there was no way they were going to get away with it - an example had to be made!

What?

Is not too hard to keep a database with major trackers announce URLs and inspect some headers.

There is no judge or prosecutor here because there is no trial, just a bunch of suggestions. Fail.

Justice upside down: one company is a prosecutor and judge! How they identify “illegal content”??? Any website could be marked as legal or illegal depending on country and laws within it. Why they not trying to shutdown whole internet because it distributes “illegal” content?