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The use of the Internet in a corporate environment must be guided by minimum rules, adhering to the needs of each business. This is because, improper use of the internet can bring harm, often irreversible for the organization. Problems associated with corporate data security, availability of the internet resource and employee productivity are examples that motivate this concern.
According to a survey by Triad, a productivity consulting firm, 80% of respondents say they spend up to 3 hours a day on personal activities, including using the internet. In the study, 35.6% stated that the internet is what diverts their focus away from work.
Many companies give their employees the freedom to use the internet without any restrictions, based on a trust where common sense is the sole responsible for the management of this asset. However, this relationship can be afected when one of the parties fails to fulfill its obligations, jeopardizing data structure, and corporate image.
The following is a list of topics that show how inappropriate use of the Internet can undermine the progress of corporate activities.
Security
When it comes to misuse of the internet, danger can arise precisely because of the lack of security. There are threats in ads, social networks, e-mail messages and links. Every day, viruses are launched through the web in different ways. A wrong click can be fatal in situations like these.
In a recent cooperative study between Google and the University of California, it has been concluded that Brazilians are the most afflicted with viruses that steal passwords. 18.3% of the cases filed by the researchers came from Brazil.
In addition to fees like this, the internet is full of malicious users waiting for a victim. According to a survey by the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, attacks on the Internet have increased about 300 times in the last 15 years. There were so many cases that the Ministry of Defense itself created a nucleus to closely monitor the situation.
But this situation does not only occur in Brazil: it affects the whole world. The latest ransomware attack, the Bad Rabbit, hit much of eastern Europe and left many Russian websites and institutions on alert. The internet is an environment full of layers and threats. Therefore, investing in virtual security is essential.
Productivity
The internet is one of the most valuable resources for businesses. Since it facilitates the execution of several essential tasks and can be one of the greatest allies to support production, creativity and professional performance. However, productivity gaps are also recurrent if they are used improperly.
The Center for Research, Development and Continuing Education (CPDEC) conducted a research with over 800 respondents. In the study, 62% of professionals stated that they have already witnessed people using the company’s internet resource inappropriately for personal purposes.
For this reason, visibility and control over the internet resource is so important to industry leaders within an organization. Through the visibility it is possible to identify where the useful work time of the employees is being applied. Eventually, this avoids a productivity gap or lack of team focus.
It is worth mentioning that the best solution to control the productivity of the team is not to restrict access to the Internet, but rather to create guidelines for its proper use. Managers and employees should be part of the process of developing this document, bringing impartiality and alignment to the proposed guidelines.
Availability
When using data from the same CPDEC survey mentioned in the previous topic, a similar line of reasoning can be followed to explain the problems surrounding the availability of the internet.
By giving free navigation to the team, without establishing usage guidelines, as well as a solution to create visibility into the use of the Internet, managers are not aware of the navigation profile of their employees.
Therefore, if one of your employees is using the Internet in an inappropriate way, consuming a large amount of bandwidth, this activity will impact the quality of the service, impacting also other employees of the company.
The absence of control mechanisms makes it very difficult to identify these types of problems, as well as the application of measures to prevent this from occurring. To better understand the mechanisms that assist in creating visibility on the use of the internet, we suggest reading the Web Content Filtere-book. This stuff is essential for understanding the format of the feature that assists in the management of corporate internet usage.
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