Key Internet Usage Statistics

GENERAL MISUSE of the Internet

• One-third of time spent online at work is non-work-related. (Websense, IDC)
• Internet misuse at work is costing American corporations more than $85 billion annually in lost productivity. (Websense, 2003)
• 80 percent of companies reported that employees had abused Internet privileges, such as downloading pornography or pirated software. (CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2003)

HACKING

• 75% of companies cited employees as a likely source of hacking attacks. (CSI/FBI, 2003)
• 45% of businesses had reported unauthorized access by insiders. (CSI/FBI, 2003)

INSTANT MESSAGING

• Nearly 80 percent of instant messaging in companies is done over public IM services such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo, exposing companies to security risks. (Radicati, 2003)
• There are more than 43 million users of consumer IM at work. (IDC, 2003)
• Only one quarter of companies have a clearly defined policy on the user of IM at work. (Silicon.com, 2003)

PEER-TO-PEER FILE-SHARING

• Forty-five percent of the executable files downloaded through Kazaa contain malicious code. (Trusecure, 2004)
• 73 percent of all movie searches on file-sharing networks were for pornography. (Palisade Systems, 2003)
• A company can be liable for up to $150K per pirated work if it is allowing employees to use the corporate network to download copyrighted material. (RIAA, 2003)

PORN

• 70 percent of porn is downloaded between 9am and 5pm. (SexTracker)
• 37 percent of at-work Internet users in the US had visited an X-rated Web site from work. (ComScore Networks, Dec 2003)

SPYWARE

• 1 in 3 companies have detected spyware on their network. (Websense UK Survey, 2003)
• There more than 7,000 spyware programs. (Aberdeen Group, 2003)

STREAMING MEDIA

• 77 percent of weekly online listening to Internet Radio takes place between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific time. (Arbitron, 2004)
• 44 percent of corporate employees actively use streaming media. (Nielsen NetRatings, 2002)

VIRUSES/MALICIOUS CODE

• Although 99% of companies use antivirus software, 82% of them were hit by viruses and worms. (CSI/FBI, 2003)
• Blended threats made up 54 percent of the top 10 malicious code submissions over the last six months of 2003. (Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, 2003)
• The number of malicious code attacks with backdoors, which are often used to steal confidential data, rose nearly 50% in the last year. (Symantec, 2003)