Too many e-traders surfing at work
July 7, 1999
Web posted at: 10:59 a.m. EDT (1459 GMT)
by Stacy Collett
ComputerWorld
(IDG) -- Pornography, check. Online
auctions, check. Sports sites, check.
MIS director Jeff LePage thought his
company's network was insulated
from the Internet sites that typically
lure employees away from their work.
Those activities are policed and in
some cases blocked with monitoring
software because the company policy
at American Fast Freight Inc. in
Seattle clearly states that any online
activity "not specifically and
exclusively work related" is
prohibited.
So imagine LePage's surprise when a
new culprit emerged: He recently
discovered that one employee had
visited a stock-monitoring Web site
186 times during a 12-day period.
"We've been bitten" by the online
investing bug, LePage said. He isn't
alone.
According to a study by SurfWatch Software, a division of Spyglass Inc. in
Los Gatos, Calif., investment sites are now second only to general news as
the Web addresses most visited by people at work — knocking out the
pornography, entertainment and sports sites that dominated the first quarter
of 1998.
The stock market boom and the day-trading frenzy at Web sites such as
ETrade.com and Schwab.com have created a form of recreational surfing
that hits employers especially hard. The best time to trade is during business
hours, and that means greater demands on a company's network bandwidth
and resources, as well as a substantial productivity hit.
The amount of time that at-work visitors
spent on the top 10 financial Web sites
increased nearly 60% on average from
December 1998 to March 1999, according
to Media Metrix Inc., a New York company
that monitors Internet traffic. For instance,
at-work Internet users spent an average of
4.4 hours during the month of March at an
investment hub called Stocksite.com — a
166% increase since December, the report
said.
Yet few companies have written Internet
usage policies that specifically prohibit online
investing.
A Computerworld survey of 102 network
administrators found that 55% noticed
employees trading stocks or visiting
investment sites during work hours. Only
40% of the companies had written policies that prohibit specific online
activities, and only a quarter of those policies mentioned online trading. And
just 8% of companies block access to investment Web sites, the survey
found.
Who pays?
Online investing is a special problem for companies that bill clients by the
hour, such as the law firm Epstein, Becker & Green PC in New York.
Employees may be spending hours trading stocks and charging that time to a
client. "It's something that we'll be dealing with more and more," said David
Kroening, assistant director of technology and operations.
The firm uses software from Kirkland, Wash.-based Content Technologies
Inc., which scans Web pages and blocks employees from opening
executable files. That means employees can check out the price of a stock
but can't place an order. "They're probably just turning around and picking
up the phone" to make a trade, Kroening acknowledged.
But employees increasingly are demanding access to now-blocked sites for
business purposes, he said. When that Internet floodgate opens, online
trading will increase, and so will Kroening's monitoring.
Some online investment activity occurs under the radar of even vigilant
network managers, because seemingly innocuous Web sites such as
MyYahoo.com let users set up customized stock news and portfolio
tracking pages. "They require a cookie to see what an individual is doing,"
LePage said. "You would even have to do a spot check on the person's
computer to see what the activity actually is."
Kroening said there isn't much he can do to monitor those "personal pages,"
but if he notices someone generally using the Web a lot, he will notify the
employee's manager. "It's more of a personnel issue now" than a technical
one, he said.
Unlike online pornography, employee stock trading doesn't put the company
in jeopardy for lawsuits. So companies are more likely to try to limit online
investing to some acceptable level than to try to stamp it out entirely.
Cellular One in San Francisco, which has had episodes of employees visiting
investment sites, developed a rule of thumb for determining how much is too
much. An employee spending 30 to 40 minutes per day on recreational
browsing will probably show up on a list of Internet abusers, said Eric
Fermon, senior information network specialist. The company can then
choose to cut off an employee's access to the Internet.
The company uses SurfWatch software that can be set to allow visits to
stock sites only during lunchtime and outside normal office hours, Fermon
said, "but we haven't tuned it to that pitch yet."
Pull out the policy
Even companies with an Internet usage policy may not have updated it to
cover the surge in online stock trading.
At electronics company Hella North America Inc. in Flora, Ill., online trading
is starting to show up on network logs. "There have been instances where
people spend up to two hours in one setting doing stuff like this," said Dustin
Hackney, network administrator. Hella's Internet policy states that browsers
should be used only for business purposes and only during business hours,
but it doesn't specifically prohibit online investing.
Experts said it's time for companies to drag out their Internet policy and
specifically include a limit on personal investment activity. "If there's not a
policy, there's going to be an argument," said Peter Kershaw, president of
Content Technologies.
Since the online trading incident at American Fast Freight, the company has
amended its Internet usage policy to specifically prohibit use of online
investing sites during work hours — except for lunchtime.
"In all honesty, no one said on the front end that he was not supposed to do
this," LePage said, referring to the employee who went on a 12-day
stock-watching binge. "And you can't really penalize someone for that if they
don't know. But a level of common sense would dictate this probably isn't
appropriate."
Most frequent recreational surfing by employees:
Sports
Stock trading
Job hunting
Pornography
Base: Survey of 102 network administrators at companies with 500 or more
employees. |
