The truth of the American workplace rears its naked head yet again.  In an audit of 10,000 PCs at 125 business and public sector networks over the last nine months, PixAlert – a company that blocks illicit images on corporate networks – found that 25% contained some form of pornography.  The study determined that 46.8% showed full nudity and/or sexual activity; 0.3% were deemed “illegal.”   

Proof that man still has control over machine, the study found that employees “in some cases are going to extraordinary lengths to bypass protection systems in order to obtain and distribute inappropriate material," said Andy Churley, a PixAlert director, in a written statement, InformationWeek reported.

Other statistics of note:

• Of the 12,000 email accounts audited, 12.4% had porn
• 35% of the images were downloaded online, while 45.2% were sent by email
• 35.5% of the images came from internal sources

“Corporate officers wrongly assume that boundary protection systems stop all digital pornography from entering the organization,” said Churley. 

But do officers really assume the protection works?  After all, one in four of them might have porn on their computer as well.

One weakness of the study appears to be a lack of details.  Sure, “Full nudity” is descriptive enough, but “sexual activity?”  Take a look at Tila Tequila’s MySpace page to understand how fine the line can be.  It also wouldn’t hurt to see a gender breakdown, not that we’d really need research to know whether it’s men or women who are downloading and sharing pornography more often.

Still, everyone is all too familiar with PixAlert’s findings.  What will be corporate America’s response?

 
Scott Goldberg

 
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/38kpkw (InformationWeek)