Pornography use continues to cause a stir
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IT executives need to be more diligent about monitoring and controlling the information passing across their networks if they are to protect their company’s brand image, fulfil compliance obligations and avoid employee legal action.
Security company PixAlert audited over 125 corporate and public sector networks over a period of nine months and found that 26% of the 10,000 PCs scanned contained digital pornography or other images that it classed as ‘inappropriate’. The survey also found that over 12% of the 12,000 email accounts and over 5% of the 26,000 file server scanned demonstrated similar issues.
Of the images discovered, almost half showed full-nudity or sexual activity and a small number (0.3%) were deemed to contain illegal material. Over a third were Internet-sourced images, while 42% were attached to emails, of which 20% were outbound and 36% were sent internally.
While many corporate policies and contracts make such behaviour a sackable offence, few companies actually put in place a system that can detect, manage and eliminate the proliferation of such images, say the report’s authors.
