Internet Use at Work - Analytical Research Based on Real Data

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 6, 2009 -- In the end of 2008, Entensys released a new version of UserGate Proxy & Firewall that included a content filtering tool. This feature enables the administrator to allow or deny users access to certain categories of websites.

The filtering tool’s work is based on the following principle. When a user is trying to connect to a website from a corporate LAN, anonymous data containing website address and classification request (this request is later used to allow or deny access depending on the policy of the company that uses UserGate Proxy & Firewall) is sent to the content filtering server where it is stored and becomes available for further assessment.
We have analyzed information collected over the course of three months. The normal divergence was found to be within the range of 0.1% to 1.5%, depending on the category. Thus, taking into account the specifics of data samples, the results can be considered reliable.
The study was devoted solely to the usage of Internet at work. The reliability of the data samples is confirmed by the fact we analyzed information provided by enterprises from different industry sectors (see the chart below).

Analysis of research conducted in the 2nd Quarter of 2009 resulted in the following rating chart of website categories popular among employees:
01. Social networks, personal sites and blogs 20.40%
02. Sites devoted to computers and Internet 14.10%
03. Different categories of sites not related to work 8.70%
04. Economics and business 7.60%
05. Search engines 7.30%
06. News and media 6.70%
07. Online mail services 4.80%
08. Parked domains and ‘dead sites’ 3.80%
09. Entertainment and games 3.60%
10. Sites containing malicious software 3.30%
11. Advertisement sites 3.10%
12. Data portals 3.10%
13. Video hosting sites 3.00%

14. Pornographic and adult sites 2.90%
15. Personal online file storage services 2.80%
16. Education and research 2.40%
17. Online messengers, instant messengers 1.40%
18. Online music stores 0.60%
19. Government agencies 0.30%
20. Peer-to-peer and torrent networks 0.10%

The research results manifest a clear dependence of website popularity on the number of computers in a local area network and, consequently, the size of an office. For example, the frequency of visits to odnoklassniki.ru in LANs with 25 to 100 computers is twice higher than in LANs with 100 to 200 computers. At the same time, employees of offices with less than 25 computers in a LAN visited the website four times more often!
The above findings lead to a conclusion that employees of smaller businesses are subject to less strict control, which results in poorer work discipline.