Social Networking Sites Costs UK plc GBP 6.5 Billion In Lost Productivity
21 January, 2008
One FTSE100 CISO reported that they now block Facebook as it was consuming 30% of their bandwidth and they are looking to block both MySpace and e-bay as they consume 10% and 5% of the corporate Internet browsing bandwidth.
According to recent research by Computerweekly.com, 63% of businesses are planning to monitor or limit staff access to these sites and 17% plan to ban access at work completely over the next 6 months.
David Hobson MD of GSS said “Social networking sites are now integral to the way that many of the latest and youngest recruits into the workforce communicate and work, so for some sectors social networking sites may have a part to play in terms of competitive advantage or used for research or as a marketing tool. It comes down to a fine balancing act – and mostly a case of introducing a “reasonable use” policy.”
“However, what is apparent are the serious security implications associated with social networking, where hackers, exploiters and extortionists are worming their way into these sites extracting all sorts of information on the members – our advice as always to anyone using these sites is to give as little personal information away as possible.” said Hobson.
GSS claims to have saved thousands of pounds a year by practicing what they preach by limiting access to Facebook and other social networking sites on its company network with Internet filtering software.
"Our Internet bandwidth requirements recently came up for review and it was suggested we would need an upgrade, costing a few thousand pounds more a year," said David Hobson, managing director of GSS.
"After analysing the traffic patterns, however, we realised that around 25 per cent of our Web usage was for social networking sites such as Facebook. After locking down this traffic and just allowing staff to view these sites during their lunch hour or after work, we found we didn't actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all and have saved a considerable amount in the upgrade costs!" he added.
According to recent research by Computerweekly.com, 63% of businesses are planning to monitor or limit staff access to these sites and 17% plan to ban access at work completely over the next 6 months.
David Hobson MD of GSS said “Social networking sites are now integral to the way that many of the latest and youngest recruits into the workforce communicate and work, so for some sectors social networking sites may have a part to play in terms of competitive advantage or used for research or as a marketing tool. It comes down to a fine balancing act – and mostly a case of introducing a “reasonable use” policy.”
“However, what is apparent are the serious security implications associated with social networking, where hackers, exploiters and extortionists are worming their way into these sites extracting all sorts of information on the members – our advice as always to anyone using these sites is to give as little personal information away as possible.” said Hobson.
GSS claims to have saved thousands of pounds a year by practicing what they preach by limiting access to Facebook and other social networking sites on its company network with Internet filtering software.
"Our Internet bandwidth requirements recently came up for review and it was suggested we would need an upgrade, costing a few thousand pounds more a year," said David Hobson, managing director of GSS.
"After analysing the traffic patterns, however, we realised that around 25 per cent of our Web usage was for social networking sites such as Facebook. After locking down this traffic and just allowing staff to view these sites during their lunch hour or after work, we found we didn't actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all and have saved a considerable amount in the upgrade costs!" he added.
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