| [June 23, 2004] |
 |
Cerberian and SonicWALL Web Usage Survey Reveals 75% Accidentally See Porn at Work; Personal Internet Surfing and Pornography Plague the Office
SUNNYVALE, Calif. & SALT LAKE CITY --(Business Wire)-- June 23, 2004 -- Survey validates need for Internet access management technology
More than 75 percent of people have accidentally visited a pornographic Web site while at work; 15 percent have visited such sites more than 10 times, according to a new Web usage survey conducted by Cerberian, Inc. a leading provider of intelligent Web filtering solutions for businesses, homes and schools, and SonicWALL Inc., (Nasdaq:SNWL), a leading provider of integrated security, productivity and mobility solutions.
The survey also reported that 50 percent of respondents spent more than 10 percent of their time at work surfing the Web for personal reasons, which is roughly equal to four hours per week, or nearly nine days a year.
More than 2,400 people responded during the month of April 2004 via email to questions about everything from Internet access policies, to personal surfing habits at work and feelings about co-workers surf habits. According to the survey, the Internet is still a relatively unmonitored medium with 60 percent of the respondents indicating their organizations did not have rules against personal Web surfing at work, and more than 50 percent of organizations have not implemented any type of Internet filtering technology.
Unmonitored Internet access raises potential liability issues for organizations especially when it comes to employees being exposed to pornography at the office and employees using corporate resources to download, store and exchange copyrighted material. Inappropriate use of the Internet at work may give rise to serious disciplinary problems in the workplace. Results from the Cerberian/SonicWALL Web Usage Survey validate the need for organizations to implement Internet access policies and content filtering technologies.
"SonicWALL and Cerberian compiled the results of this survey to give organizations a better understanding of how to balance the wants of employees and the needs of the business," said Matt Mosman, chief executive officer of Cerberian. "The results of the survey are clear in that 63% of employees are concerned about the ease of access to objectionable content at work. Our technologies protect organizations and employees from the inherent risks of the Internet. We recommend that organizations take the initiative and implement the appropriate Internet access policies to help strengthen employee productivity and network security."
According to the survey the most common ways people have accidentally reached pornographic content on the Web are:
-- Pop up windows (55%),
-- Misrepresented links (52%),
-- Misspelled URLs (48%), and
-- Auto links within emails (23%).
While the survey indicates it is common to accidentally come across pornographic web sites, the survey also reported the following:
-- 16 percent of people have knowingly surfed pornography sites at work at least once;
-- 40 percent have seen co-workers surfing porn sites;
-- 32 percent of people have seen co-workers surf gambling sites;
-- 91 percent have seen people shopping online; and
-- 85 percent have seen co-workers surfing sports-related web sites.
The survey also asked how people felt after seeing co-workers surf pornography, gambling, shopping and sports web sites. Sixty-eight percent were bothered by pornography surfing, with 47 percent bothered enough to confront the offender or mention it to management/human resources. Fifty-nine percent were offended by gambling surfing, 35 percent by shopping online and 29 percent by sports surfing.
"It is clear from the survey that there is a growing awareness among individuals as well as organizations of the problems resulting from unregulated employee Internet access," said Matthew Medeiros, chief executive officer at SonicWALL. "While pornography is obviously the biggest concern, other surfing habits, from shopping to sports, are absorbing an increasing amount of employee attention inside organizations. Lost productivity as well as security issues and the abuse of network resources will continue to mount unless businesses formulate and enforce Internet access policies and internal controls."
Cerberian's advanced Web filtering solution is more accurate and more effective than traditional filtering solutions. As a result of its Dynamic Real-Time Rating (DRTR) Technology, Cerberian's intelligent filtering solution rises above the competition and in turn provides the best Web management tool and filtering technology available.
In 2003, SonicWALL selected Cerberian's master ratings database as the rating database for SonicWALL's Content Filtering Service (CFS) 2.0., which is integrated with SonicWALL's family of security gateway appliances to provide policy enforcement and protection from unwanted and inappropriate Internet content for businesses and schools. SonicWALL CFS 2.0 enforces content filtering policies by combining Cerberian's rating database with SonicWALL's unique and innovative filtering and caching architecture to enforce the desired levels of access for groups and individuals.
"We have the most effective and efficient solution available to protect against the threats we see from this survey. Folks who are concerned about employee Internet access need to deploy Cerberian's solution," said Matt Mosman. "Other vendors who merely rely on URL filters are not capable of providing the same level of protection. We don't rely on human raters to find the latest threats on the Net; rather we use intelligent technology to do the hard work for us, which has proven to be more accurate and more efficient."
Report Availability:
A complete compilation of survey findings can be found at www.cerberian.com/surveyresults.
About SonicWALL, Inc.
SonicWALL, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated network security, mobility, and productivity solutions for the SMB, enterprise, e-commerce, education, healthcare, retail/point-of-sale, and government markets. Core technologies include firewall, VPN, wireless, intrusion detection and prevention, SSL, anti-virus, and content filtering, along with award-winning security management solutions. Together, these products and technologies provide the most comprehensive distributed enforcement architecture available. SonicWALL, Inc. is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. SonicWALL trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol SNWL. For more information, contact SonicWALL at +1 (408) 745-9600 or visit the company web site at http://www.sonicwall.com/.
Safe Harbor Regarding Forward-Looking Statements made by SonicWALL
Certain statements in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the ability of our technologies to protect organizations and employees from objectionable content on the Internet and the ability of our Content Filtering Service to provide policy enforcement and protection from unwanted and inappropriate Internet content. These forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the time the statements are made and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. In addition, please see the "Risk Factors" described in SonicWALL's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2003 and Form 10-Q for subsequent periods, for a more detailed description of the risks facing our business. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to SonicWALL as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement.
NOTE: SonicWALL is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
About Cerberian
Cerberian has revolutionized Internet management by delivering the most intelligent, hassle-free Web filtering solution available. This unique technology allows organizations to effectively manage and filter objectionable and unproductive Web content while reducing risk of security breaches, limiting legal liability, conserving IT resources, and boosting employee productivity. Offered as a managed service, Cerberian minimizes initial investment and ongoing management burden by maintaining the technology and data management responsibility at Cerberian's global data centers. Cerberian realizes that a URL database alone is not enough to stop new and uncategorized Web content. Consequently, unlike other filtering solutions, Cerberian's Dynamic Real-Time Rating (DRTR) technology analyzes all requested Web pages in real-time to ensure the highest level of protection while constantly feeding new ratings to Cerberian's massive ratings database. Cerberian Web Manager is available as an integrated, value-added service on leading network appliances, service solutions, and security software applications, allowing organizations to choose how they prefer to deploy and manage Internet security.
Cerberian(R) and the Cerberian(R) logo are registered trademarks of Cerberian(R) Inc. Cerberian Web Manager(TM), Dynamic Real-Time Rating(TM), and Dynamic Background Rating(TM) are trademarks of Cerberian Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
INDUSTRIES
Activate Email 
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.
