Recent polls have shown that more consumers started their online holiday shopping earlier this year and are buying more online than ever before. Now, a new poll indicates that employers are contributing to the online shopping surge by allowing employees to browse for gifts during the workday, according to a survey of 2,700 IT administrators in the U.S. and Britain by SurfControl.
Approximately seven out of 10, or 67 percent, of U.S. companies told SurfControl in a poll that they don't restrict employees' access to online shopping sites. Employers allowed their workers to browse retail, catalogue and greeting card Web sites, according to the survey that polled 1,300 companies in the United States that use Web filtering to manage employee access to Internet sites. An equal number of companies (70 percent) also reported they don't restrict access to eBay and other types of auction sites.
Survey results showed companies' top Internet use restrictions by far were access to sexually explicit Web sites and Web-based e-mail, such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Ninety-seven percent of the companies responded that their policies specifically restricted access to sexually explicit Websites, while 45 percent said they restricted access to Web-based e-mail.
"While the Internet poses numerous risks, it's clear that corporate America does not consider shopping as much of a risk as Web-based e-mail," said Susan Getgood, SurfControl's senior vice president of marketing. "The results suggest that companies are more tolerant about online shopping and focus more on monitoring abusers. It appears many firms are trusting employees to use good judgment about how and when they use the Internet at work, as long as it doesn't become a productivity issue."
The analyst firm IDC estimates that about 30 to 40 percent of employees' Internet use is not business-related, even before the distractions of the holidays begin. "Every year, non-business Internet usage increases by 10 to 15 percent," according to Brian Burke, an IDC security analyst. "As business use of the Internet grows, so does 'incidental' use at the office, such as music downloads, sports and shopping."
SurfControl also surveyed about 1,400 British companies and found their attitudes similar to those of their U.S. counterparts. Approximately six out of 10, or 61 percent, of British companies reported they don't restrict employees' Internet access to shopping sites, while 97 percent restrict access to sexually explicit Web sites.
The global insurance firm UnumProvident is one of those companies that uses Internet filtering but chooses not to block shopping and auction sites. The company has been filtering employees' Net access since 1996.
"The Internet today is a business tool, like the phone. We expect that as employees use this tool for work, there also will be some personal or incidental use," said Johnathan Hyler, UnumProvident's enterprise security architect. "We're more concerned about measuring and analyzing the kinds of Internet usage that can hurt the company."
The SurfControl survey, conducted during the last two weeks in November, supported recent online shopping research from Harris Interactive, Nielson/NetRatings and Goldman Sachs that found 67 percent of shoppers had visited an eCommerce site during the week of November 15. Those polled said they are spending 23 percent of their holiday season budget online, up from 17 percent last year.
SurfControl offers a total content security solution that combines Web, E-mail (including Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus) and Instant Message Filters with relevant content database and adaptive reasoning tools to automate content recognition.