And so we bid a sad farewell to Caminogate
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Employees are downloading in the office
INSECURITY FIRM Scansafe is reporting a 55 per cent increase in the number of workers attempting to download illegal material at work.
The firm said that workers were increasingly choosing not to download copyrighted material at home but instead were doing it at work. Which only really makes sense if they care more about their home connection than they do about their job. Alternatively they may not have read the terms and conditions of their employment. And to be fair, we do not know which is worse.
Scansafe monitors millions of enterprise connections across the globe and warned that the increase had been seen over the last three months and involved the downloading of both software and MP3s.
Although we thought that workers might just be stupid, Scansafe goes one step further and suggests that they could be in some sort of trance that makes them forget where they are.
"Employees mistakenly assume they can use the Internet at work in exactly the same way as they use it at home and this is potentially one of the reasons for this steady increase in illegal download attempts over recent months," said Spencer Parker, director of product management at Scansafe, who warned that ultimately it would be the enterprise that would pay the price.
"Downloading illegal content is a 'double whammy' for employers as not only does it put them at risk legally but it also puts the company network at risk of being infected with malware. A large majority of free illegal downloading websites are often riddled with malware."
Scansafe recommends that firms create acceptable use policies rather than fall afoul of the music and software industries' copyright enforcers. Companies should then make sure that they let their staffs know what those policies are, which is often the most overlooked part of any arrangement.
It also recommends that companies should adopt technology to stop it from happening in the first place. µ
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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?