OCTOBER 2006: ISSUE 62 PORNOGRAPHY: LOOKING FOR "LOVE" IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES One week's worth of computer log entries from six federal offices recently showed more than 4,700 instances of accessing sexually explicit and gambling Web sites, according to a recently released study from the U.S. Department of the Interior as reported in a Gregory FCA Communications press release. But the problem of Internet abuse threatens more than just government institutions. Many instances of Internet misuse are in the private sector and include sending harassing or potentially offensive messages or surfing and exchanging pornographic sites, according to a recent article in expressitpeople.com. Email has also become a major vehicle for exposing employees to pornography and sexual and racial harassment. Roughly 2.5 billion pornographic emails are sent every day. And the majority of traffic occurs during the nine-to-five workday, Family Safe Media and other organizations report. THE COST TO ORGANIZATIONS Besides many companies' and individuals' personal disgust at the use of workplace computers for pornography - especially child pornography - there are also practical reasons for companies to take action to guard against it. In terms of loss of productivity, non-business-related Internet activity costs companies more than a billion dollars. Also, possession and distribution of child pornography is a federal crime that must be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). In short, the law generally treats child pornography infractions in the same manner as a heroin possession charge; as one court put it "child pornography is illegal contraband," according to a recent Marshal Inc. press release. Marshal is a global vendor of Comprehensive Secure Email and Internet Management solutions. Child porn in a corporate email network, therefore, can open an entire organization, its management and employees, to risk of federal liability and repercussions. It can also cause damages to brand equity, reputation and standing in the community, Marshal Inc. reported: "The prosecution and business disruption organizations face from neglecting to protect staff from inappropriate and undesirable content are dire," noted Chris Christiansen, program vice president, security products and services, International Data Corporation (IDC). ONE ANSWER: MONITORING As a result, corporate protection experts increasingly advocate 24/7 employee monitoring, with security cameras in public areas, logging and recording of employee phone calls, and tracking everything people do on their workplace computers. "Organizations are beginning to recognize the need for real-time image analysis capability at the email gateway," said Penny Freeman, Director, Marshal Sales Engineering, Americas. Because of the recent Hewlett Packard spying scandal, executives increasingly say they don't want to do anything that could be considered corporate spying on employees, customers, partners, or journalists. But that hasn't stopped many companies from using the newest technologies to boost their efforts to monitor Internet abuse. In fact, 76 percent of companies monitor employee Web site connections, and 36 percent of employers track content that employees are receiving and sending, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard, according to a 2005 survey of 526 companies by the American Management Association (AMA) and the ePolicy Institute. Also, fifty-five percent of employers retain and review e-mail. All that monitoring has resulted in 26 percent of companies firing employees for misusing the Internet and 25 percent firing workers for misusing e-mail, the survey said. NEW MONITORING TECHNOLOGIES Among the more recent available technologies for monitoring Internet abuse is MailMarshal from Internet content security provider Marshal, Inc. The software detects images in an email. Its deep porn scan engine applies advanced, proprietary algorithms to scan and identify the image's flesh tone palette ranges -- including regional skin color variations. It also enhances areas of interest such as edge, curvature and body size reduction, producing a probability output as to an image's pornographic orientation. Meanwhile, Adam Schran, CEO of Ascentive, is creating a workplace activity management software called BeAware. The software helps employees remain aware of federal laws and corporate computer use policies so they don't purposely or accidentally violate them, risk their job, or ruin their career, according to the Gregory FCA press release. (SEE SIDE STORY.) About 13 percent of companies have also started logging instant-messaging (IM) records. IM programs let users exchange short text messages with online buddies in real time. Many employees believe that IM messages are undetectable by employers, but that isn't really the case. In fact, it was IM that came back to haunt former Republican congressman Mark Foley of Florida, according to a recent Washington Post article. Foley resigned abruptly when he was confronted with his e-mails to a young Capitol Hill page. They showed him taking an unusual, even disturbing, interest in a young subordinate. The most damning revelations, however, came from his sexually explicit IM sessions with several pages. The corporate crackdown on IM is starting to take effect: About 2 percent of employers have fired employees for something they said over IM. "Technology has provided a capability that we never had before to check up on employees like never before," said Manny Avramidis, AMA's senior vice president of global human in the Washington Post article. "It's within an organization's right to monitor anything you do during work time using work tools."
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