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News- 21 June 2005

Survey: More Than 40 Percent of the Largest 500 U.S. Firms Have Taken Disciplinary Action Against Employees in Past Year for Illicit Workplace Images

Delta Consulting/PixAlert Study Finds 25 Percent Lack Awareness of Federal and State Regulations Addressing Illicit Images in the Workplace

 

–Delta Consulting and PixAlert today released the results of the 2005 Computer Usage Policy Study of the 500 largest U.S. firms.

The report, which was conducted by independent market research firm Delta Consulting and sponsored by PixAlert, was undertaken in May 2005 and covered a cross-section of corporations that comprise the country’s top 500 firms. Executives in senior managerial positions responsible for computer usage policies participated in this survey.

Among the major findings are that 90 percent of firms have procedures in place when illicit images are discovered in the workplace, and 50 percent have had to use these procedures for incidents experienced during the past year. Of those firms that pursued an investigation, some 44 percent resulted in the employee’s removal from the company and 41 percent took other disciplinary action.

The survey also revealed the sources where companies perceive the highest risks from harmful images entering computers will come from in the next few years. Respondents perceived the highest threats would emanate from the Internet and email/email attachments (both mentioned by 93 percent of respondents), followed by other gateway threats such as embedded (81 percent) and zipped files (73 percent). Other high-perceived threats come from WiFi networks (68 percent), cell phone cameras (63 percent), non-enterprise controlled networks (61 percent), memory sticks and encrypted files (59 percent) and CDs (54 percent).

Surprisingly, 26 percent of respondents weren’t fully aware that state and federal regulations regarding sexual harassment and hostile work environments apply to the viewing of inappropriate images in the workplace. Almost half (46 percent) weren’t fully aware that attorneys first look for evidence in sexual harassment and hostile work environment claims in a company’s records of Internet use, e-mail traffic and images on the hard drive. And 76 percent weren’t fully aware that the distribution and consumption of child pornography is one of the FBI’s top three investigative priorities for the next two years.

“We were not surprised to see that almost all leading organizations surveyed have computer usage policies in place,” said Alain Recaborde, principal of Delta Consulting. “But given the high percentage of organizations uncovering images banned by their policies, we were alarmed to find the relatively low awareness of the legal ramifications and potential exposure among those responsible for computer usage policies.”

“It’s interesting that beyond the expected sources of these threats including the Web and email, respondents identified CDs, Memory sticks, USB Keys, WiFi networks and other external network threats as high-risk origins of harmful images,” said Andy Churley, vice president of marketing, PixAlert. “Clearly, organizations need to find ways to protect themselves and employees from multiple sources.”

More than half (56 percent) of the surveyed executives are at director, vice president or senior vice president level. The remainder (44 percent) are senior managers or managers. They are employed in a number of functional areas, including Human Resources (10 percent), Legal (18 percent), Compliance (16 percent), IT (20 percent), Internal Audit (20 percent), Finance (14 percent) and Risk Management (2 percent). Their organizations are in a cross-section of industries including manufacturing (40 percent), retail /wholesale (16 percent), transportation (6 percent), healthcare (6 percent) as well as banking/financial services, utilities and telecommunications (4 percent each).