It’s baaaacccccckkkkkk! Happens every year. March Madness, that is. Everybody loves it. (Well, almost everybody.)
The excitement! The fun! The astounding fast breaks, slam dunks and three-pointers! And oh yes, watching it all unfold on your office computer.
Who could not like it? Well, for openers, the overworked folks who have to worry about workforce productivity, bandwidth costs, security issues and legal risks.
Here’s just one of many worrisome predictions, “FIRST WEEK OF TOURNEY COULD COST $1.8 BILLION.” It comes from the Challenger March Madness Report. The report also states, “The men’s college basketball tournament, better known as March Madness, marks the arrival of several other annual rituals: employee-organized office pools, a potential dip in productivity and a marked decline in Internet speed, as workers soak up bandwidth watching live streaming broadcasts of the tournament games during office hours.”
Not exactly good news for businesses and government agencies during this time of troublesome economic conditions and serious budget worries.
Maybe it’s time to revisit your AUP and rebrief your workers on the negative impact their fun could have on the organization and ultimately on their own job security. And if your organization doesn’t already have a robust Internet usage management solution in place, it may just be time to look into it seriously.
Wavecrest’s Control List includes CBSSports.com and NCAA.com under the Sports category, and for those using Cyfin, access to these sites will be monitored under Sports. If you want to only block and/or monitor the live video, you can create a custom category to block and/or monitor www.ncaasports.com/mmod/player.
It’s that time of year again! The big Christmas shopping spree. As in previous years, the online version ‘officially’ starts on Cyber Monday – the day after the big T-Day weekend. And now this year we’ve got Green Monday (December 7) and Brown Monday (December 14). These are days on which, like Cyber Monday, online retailers put on a full court press to draw in ‘surfer-shoppers.’
And the whole circus runs through New Year’s Day.
The volume can be huge and problematical for employers. A survey conducted for ISACA, an association of 86,000 information technology professionals, states in part:
“Employees plan to spend nearly two full working days (14.4 hours) on average
shopping online from a work computer this holiday season. One in 10 plans to spend more than 30 hours shopping online at work. Convenience (34%) and boredom (23%) are the biggest motivators.”
“… the second annual "Shopping on the Job: Online Holiday Shopping and Workplace Internet Safety" survey found that half of those surveyed plan to holiday shop online using a work computer.”
“Dangers of shopping online include viruses, spam and phishing attacks that
invade the workplace, resulting in financial losses due to reduced productivity
and destruction or compromise of corporate data.”
In addition to generating network security and performance issues, online holiday shopping is a huge productivity waster for businesses. When workers are shopping, they’re not ‘minding the store.’ Accordingly, this is a good time for all types of organizations to take stock of their Web-use management practices and seek help if needed.
Wavecrest Computing is ready to provide that help.
Bandwidth is a main concern for many businesses during this March Madness season. Many must deal with employees using company resources to enter online office pools, blog about the top seeds, and watch live streaming games that take place throughout March and early April.
In fact, CBSsports.com is expecting even more viewers online this year. They expect the number of unique viewers for March Madness on Demand, to rise 50% to 7.2 million viewers. Last year, unique viewers grew 164% to 4.8 million and the total hours of live video/audio consumed grew 81% to 5 million hours.
With the massive number of sports Web sites and streaming games available, companies can expect to see a considerable drain on employee productivity and network bandwidth during the NCAA Tournament. While you may or may not allow your employees to follow the games at work, you will want to ensure that it doesn't interfere with your network, daily operations and business goals.
Wavecrest Computing offers Internet filtering by category or site, white list filtering, real-time monitoring and detailed Web-use reports on a particular category or site and bandwidth usage. Some reports you can use to monitor bandwidth or access to sports sites are:
Source: http://www.marketingshift.com/2009/3/cbs-expects-7-millon-online.cfm
With high unemployment rates and the potential of them rising even more, you would think that employees are doing whatever they can to be productive and keep their jobs. Instead, according to a study by Nielson Online in October 2008, visits to porn sites at work is up 23 percent from the previous year. This means that almost one quarter of employees are visiting porn sites during the workday. "Hits to porn sites are highest during office hours than at any other time of day," according to M.J. McMahon, publisher of AVN Online magazine, which tracks the adult video industry.
Some analysts believe that it has to do with the declining economy and people looking for an escape, while others speculate that it has to do with a younger generation in the workforce that has grown up accepting porn as a part of life.
Regardless, porn surfing at work poses a major legal liability risk for businesses. This type of activity puts the employer at serious risk of being sued by other workers who are offended or upset by being exposed to pornographic images. Such suits usually take the form of ‘sexual harassment’ or ‘hostile workplace’ litigation and can be very costly in terms of damage to reputation as well as legal costs. In addition to the legal costs, businesses also have to be concerned about costs due to loss of productivity.
In fact, the Senate Finance Committee is investigating the misuse of NSF computers by government officials to view online pornographic material. In one instance, the report cites an NSF "senior official" who allegedly spent 20 percent of his work hours "viewing sexually explicit" Web sites. This amounts to a potential loss of $58,000 in employee compensation.
According to Salary.com, the average employee wastes 2.09 hours a day on the Internet. An average administrative employee costs a company $37.84 per hour according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. For a company with 1,000 employees, this amounts to over $18 million in productivity losses in a year.
A simple and cost-effective way employers can help ensure that employees use the Internet for productive purposes and not visit sites that pose a legal liability threat to the company is to filter and/or monitor Web access. Wavecrest Computing offers Internet filtering and monitoring products, CyBlock and Cyfin, to fit any organization's needs. The average cost for a Wavecrest product with a 1000-employee license is $3,500 per year. This is less than two tenths of one percent of the cost of lost productivity, making an Internet filtering or monitoring solution well worth the investment.
About Wavecrest
Wavecrest Computing has been providing Internet monitoring and filtering solutions to business, government, and educational organizations worldwide since 1996. Their monitoring, filtering and reporting solutions--known for their accuracy, usability, scalability and cost-effectiveness--are found in more than 3,500 commercial and government organizations of all types and sizes. Wavecrest's customer base includes well-known names such as Procter and Gamble, U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Veterans Affairs, Miller Brewing Company, Lockheed Martin, Siemens and many others.
Sources:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/171279
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/28/grassley-launches-inquiry-widespread-porn-charges-nsf/
Cyber Monday is just around the corner, and this year, almost 84 percent of online retailers are planning Cyber Monday promotions. Cyber Monday takes place the first Monday after Thanksgiving (December 1), i.e., the first day employees are back to work. Last year, Americans made hundreds of online purchases and spent $733 million on Cyber Monday.
This year will not be any different, and in fact, more shoppers will probably be looking for online deals on Cyber Monday. A survey conducted by BIGresearch found that 70 percent of young adults 18-34 with Internet access will shop at work.
Cyber Monday shopping and holiday shopping are huge productivity wasters for businesses. Wavecrest Computing's products help organizations curb personal online shopping at work. Organizations can monitor and/or filter Web use with Wavecrest's Cyfin and CyBlock products. All products monitor and report on employees' Web use by categories, e.g., shopping, sports, games, etc. Wavecrest's CyBlock products allow organizations to block Web access by categories and hour so that they can allow employees to access shopping sites on their lunch break or after hours.
For 12 years, Wavecrest Computing has been providing Internet filtering and monitoring solutions to business, government, and educational organizations worldwide. Wavecrest's customer base includes well-known names such as the U.S. Department of Justice, Procter and Gamble, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Bridgestone, Mazda and many others.
Experts estimate that 1.5 million workers will be watching the NCAA March Madness games online from their desks, and 37.3 million workers are expected to participate in office pools. So what does this mean for employers? An overall potential $1.7 billion loss in productivity according to a study completed by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
This year, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com are making it very easy for employees to participate in the tournament pools and watch the games online. For example, CBSSports.com has teamed up with Facebook, making it easy for Facebook users to join a pool and fill out a bracket. CBSSports.com has also launched a developer platform that allows more than 200 Web sites to provide the live video feed of the games, making it easy for employees to find and watch the games online. And just like last year, NCAA On Demand is including the "boss button," which brings up a fake spreadsheet to make it appear that employees are busy working when the boss walks by.
Besides a loss in productivity, businesses and schools are concerned that widespread viewing of the live streaming video of games by employees or students will slow or crash computer networks. This is especially worrisome because for the first time this year all 63 tournament games will be available online, without online blackouts of games showing on local CBS TV stations. As a result of the mounting concern, many businesses and schools are planning to filter the games this year to prevent employees and students from watching the videos and sucking up all the bandwidth.
With the exception of the play-in game on Tuesday, March 18, first-round games are annually played during business hours on Thursday and Friday, so organizations should begin preparing now. Businesses and schools can protect their organizations from security, bandwidth and productivity issues by monitoring and/or filtering their employees’ and students’ Web use.
Wavecrest Computing offers several Internet filtering and monitoring software products for businesses and other organizations. Their products enable employers to block and/or monitor sites by categories, e.g., sports, gambling, streaming media, spyware/malicious, social networking, etc. CBSSports.com and NCAA.com, including NCAA On Demand, are included in the Wavecrest site-blocking list under sports, but if you want to only block and/or monitor the live video, users can take advantage of one of Wavecrest’s custom categories to block and/or monitor www.ncaasports.com/mmod/player. All of Wavecrest's products come with a free 30-day trial, so organizations can download the free trial and begin filtering and monitoring Web use today.
Sources:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20080311-9999-1s11gallery.html
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2008-03-12-Streaming_N.htm
Cyber Monday and online holiday shopping could mean lost productivity for businesses this year. It is the traditional start of the online holiday shopping season, and some experts are predicting a 20% hike in online sales this year with total Internet holiday shopping sales expected to near $25 billion.
According to the job placement consulting firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., of Chicago, employers could lose a total of $488 million in productivity as employees go online to do their holiday shopping.
Shop.org estimates that 68.6 million U.S. employees, or 54 percent of the workforce, will use their Internet connections at work to purchase their holiday gifts on Cyber Monday, which falls on November 26 this year. Many of the big retail stores, like Macy’s and Target, have already been planning for the day and will have one-day only specials.
Also according to Shop.org, while women are typically known to enjoy shopping more than men, it is men that are more likely to shop online from work. Adults aged 18 – 24 also fall into this category with 73 percent of them shopping online for the holidays. Overall, the Internet will influence 30 percent of holiday sales.
To protect your company against productivity losses and online security threats during the holiday season, you can monitor employees’ Internet access with one of Wavecrest’s Cyfin or CyBlock filtering and reporting software products.
Wavecrest is a ten-year industry leader in the Web-use management field and encourages companies to clearly communicate Web-use policies to their employees and then closely monitor for compliance. Wavecrest Computing’s customer base includes the U.S. Department of Justice, Procter and Gamble, London Stock Exchange, BMW, Miller Brewing Company, Citibank and many more.
Hackers are continuously looking for new ways to deliver their malicious code to computer users in order to steal private data, hijack Web transactions, or spy on users. Hackers have gotten smarter with how they deliver their malicious code by embedding it in images or disguised as a Portable Document Format (PDF).
According to Chris Rouland, the chief technology officer for IBM Corp.'s Internet Security Systems, "the next logical step seems to be the media players."
There have only been a few cases of video-related hacking. In November 2006, one of these worms was discovered. After a user opened a media file in a player, a corrupt Web site was launched without prompting. Hackers created another program that installs spyware when a video file is opened. Attackers have also tried to spread fake video links by posting them on YouTube.
Other sites that are recently the target of hackers are user-generated sites, such as social networking, blogs, and wikis.
Organizations can combat these security threats by communicating their acceptable use policies to employees and filtering and/or monitoring employee Web use. Wavecrest Computing offers several filtering and monitoring solutions to help organizations control employee Web use.
Wavecrest’s products monitor and filter Web sites by categories, e.g., spyware, social networking, streaming media, blogging, etc. By monitoring Web use, organizations can also easily identify when spyware may have been downloaded on a user’s computer as unusual patterns will begin to appear in the Web-use reports.
Sources:
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=023000SJS6V1
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,300685,00.html
A new study by McAfee found that searches for online music returned a higher percentage of risky Web sites than any other category of searches. Of the sites returned, 19.1% were considered a security risk. Searches for file sharing sites also returned a high percentage of risky Web sites. Four of the most dangerous searches on Google for file sharing sites were “bearshare,” “limeware,” “Kazaa,” and “winmx.”
This was a surprise considering that in the past pornography Web sites were always considered to be the most “risky sites.” Even though music download and file sharing sites pose a greater threat now, McAfee stated in their study that searching on adult terms is still riskier than searching on non-adult terms. They also found that searching on adult terms is producing more threatening results today than in December 2006.
What makes most of these sites dangerous is that many of them contain malicious code or spyware that is downloaded immediately when a user clicks on the infected site. In fact, a study by Symantec in September 2006 found that employees surfing the Internet poses a bigger risk to company networks than spam. This means that companies with no Web-use policy or management process to control employee Web surfing are putting their networks at a higher risk for attack.
Organizations can combat these security threats by communicating their acceptable use policies to employees and filtering and/or monitoring employee Web use. Wavecrest Computing offers several filtering and monitoring solutions to help organizations control employee Web use. As well as filtering and monitoring, Wavecrest products provide accurate and reliable reports that give organizations a clear view of their workforce’s online activity. This allows organizations to spot problem areas easily and take early corrective action.
Source: http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_may2007.html
In a recent study by YouGov, employees admitted to wasting about 30% of their time online each month. This equals about two work days per month. If you have 200 employees making an average of $15/ hour wasting this much time surfing the Internet each month, $576,000 in wages is being wasted each year.
The study also found that most of this time was wasted on shopping sites. Close behind shopping were news and travel sites. Men were found to be the biggest time wasters, and many of them admitted that they occasionally went to adult entertainment sites at work.
This amount of personal surfing is a big drain on workforce productivity and a major legal liability risk, especially if employees are being distracted by adult entertainment and gambling sites. Organizations can easily reduce personal Web surfing by employees by having a well-communicated Web-use policy in conjunction with Wavecrest’s Web monitoring and filtering software. Wavecrest’s products help organizations pinpoint both positive and negative Web surfing.
The 2007 NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, a.k.a. March Madness, will kick off at noon on March 15. The tournament is one of the most widely watched sporting events in the world and according to eMarketer, brings in more advertising dollars than the Super Bowl. In recent years, the event has posed some serious problems for businesses as it drains network bandwidth and workforce productivity and opens networks to threats posed by malware and viruses.
CBS SportsLine is offering its “NCAA On Demand” for free again this year, and most visitors are hitting the site during work hours. According to a report published last year by Nielsen/ NetRatings, more people visited NCAA and other sport sites during March Madness 2006 while at work rather than at home. The streaming video and real-time scores that are offered at “NCAA On Demand” and other sport sites are high bandwidth features that can slow a company’s network and cause problems for employees that are trying to be productive.
Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an employee outplacement company, estimates that March Madness costs the nation’s employers $237 million for every 13.5 minutes workers spend on the Internet. CBS is very aware that employees are visiting the site from work. They have once again included the clickable “Boss Button” that workers can use to quickly bring up a fake spreadsheet so that it appears they are working.
In addition to a drain on bandwidth and productivity, employers should be concerned about the increased security risks that come from employees surfing the Internet. A recent trend for hackers has been to attach malware, spyware, viruses, and other attacks to sports and gambling sites. Just in early February, hackers infiltrated the Miami Dolphins Stadium Web site and tried to attack its visitors. The last thing employers want is for one of their employees to surf to one of these infected sites just to place a bet or get the latest scores.
Businesses can protect themselves from these security, bandwidth and productivity issues by monitoring and/or filtering employees’ Web use. Wavecrest Computing offers four Internet monitoring and filtering software products for businesses and other organizations. Employers can block and/or monitor sites by categories, e.g., sports, gambling, streaming media, spyware/malicious, etc. “NCAA On Demand” is included in the Wavecrest URL list under sports, but if you want to only block and/or monitor the live video, users can take advantage of one of Wavecrest’s 12 custom categories to block and/or monitor www.ncaasports.com/mmod/player.
Sources:
“March Madness Major Threat to Network Security”: http://www.informationweek.com/news/
NCAA Sports On Demand: http://www.ncaasports.com/mmod
eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004668&src=article2_newsltr