Companies are experiencing a 40% loss in productivity each year, due to non-work-related Web surfing. In some organisations this percentage is even higher, causing organisations to lose millions per year in productivity.
So says Henk Olivier, MD of Ozone IT, a display sponsor at the ITWeb Security Summit 2016, to be held at Vodacom World from 17 to 19 May.
He says the reason this happens is because everything is available on the Internet: from knowledge to lifestyle goods.
According to Olivier, e-commerce sales in 2015 reached nearly $1.7 trillion, a figure that is projected to grow to $1.9 trillion in 2016 globally. And most of these purchases happen during business hours on company premises.
There are two types of people searching the Internet when purchasing goods online, he explains. The first type is looking for something specific, resulting in the average time spent on online shopping is much less. The other second type will search the Internet for goods related to a specific interest, and they might browse the Internet for hours to find something they wish to purchase online.
"In addition, mobile devices give people even more power to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time. The majority of mobile devices within organisations are used for social media and similar interactions if not controlled and managed by the organisation."
Olivier says his company, as provider of Kerio Control firewall and Internet monitoring solution, sees these statistics daily. "In general, organisations only implement firewall monitoring and managing solutions when they know of a problem or are aware that the Internet might be abused."
This is especially true in smaller organisations of five to 50 employees, as these businesses will only realise there is a problem when the Internet connection is persistently slow. "These organisations will continuously complain about the slow speeds to their Internet connectivity provider, assuming that the problem lies with the connection, which in 70% of cases, is not true."
In fact, what is happening is they are using the line speed 100% but have no visibility into what is hogging the bandwidth, he says.
According to Olivier, organisations, believing their line is too slow, will increase the line speed. However, this solves nothing, as the faster the line, the more it will be used unless it is controlled and monitored.
For this reason, having a good firewall solution in place is a must. Moreover, a good firewall will also scan Web sites for various types of malicious software.
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