Internet Access - A Deal-Breaker? Orginally posted on the BCS Website on 12 Jan 2009
Work in any large corporate and you'll find that there is an extensive suite of internet gateway machines tracking your every click and typed URL. If you think that the government is spying on your internet usage, then that is nothing on what your employer is holding on you with regard to your surfing activities.
When the Internet fully burst onto the scene in the mid 1990s, and it became viable to provide Internet Access to employees, a lot of corporate organisations were slow to embrace it. This uptake was castrated primarily by the IT and Senior Management 'fear' that providing the Internet to mere employees during their working day would result in a complete collapse of productivity as all the workers downed tools to surf random pages containing dubious humour, or pointless trivia (LOLCats and YouTube had yet to be invented at this juncture in history).
Fuelling this fear was the lack of any auditing tools. The only option available early on was a basic proxy server with little or no logging. Over time however, as one would expect, new tools were developed, released and implemented, which gave organisations the reporting on and accountability of employee Internet access they desired. Eventually it was accepted by most that Internet access should be available as a standard service on the desktop.
Meanwhile the tools to monitor what is being accessed kept evolving and improving, giving IT administrators the ability to chart what a particular user does, when they do it, and how often. These auditing tools can typically provide real time alerts on certain keywords, URLs, and other content. It can monitor the frequency and durations of visits, and it can do all of this without the user knowing that they are monitored. We worry about CCTV and personal details being surrendered to third parties out in the real world, but that is nothing compared to the profile that can be built up about you via your work surfing habits.
Of course, it is right that certain sites or content be blocked for access in a workplace, such as pornography, or offensive material. But should sites such as eBay, Facebook, or Webmail systems be blocked? Employees are being asked to spend over 70% of their daily lives in the workplace; surely allowing them access a wider access to websites would improve their working environment? This is especially true of the generation known as Digital Natives - the children that have yet to enter the workforce - block them from a popular social website and they will react as if a limb has been forcibly removed. For some, it may even be the deal beaker that prevents them for working in your company.
On the flipside, there are always employees that abuse the system, these people spend all day randomly surfing, posting on forums and laughing at cats who can't spell, instead of doing the job they are paid to do. However, is it the IT departments job to proactively highlight these bad apples, or should that duty fall to their line manager? A line manager knows if an employee is meeting their targets, and if they are, so what if they spent a few hours surfing one afternoon - after all, we all have our 'off days'.
Finally, with the rise of Internet enabled mobile devices, you are never going to be able to block employees from digitally tracking their social or personal lives whilst at work - surely it is better that they sit at their work PC to do it, where they can multitask it alongside their work activities, than to have them nipping off to the kitchen or meeting areas to do it instead?
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