Most employers say yes

Nov 9, 2007 14:55 GMT  ·  By

A new survey commissioned by security vendor McAfee revealed that most employees are allowed to download music at work although there are numerous risks when it comes to files downloaded from the web. According to Reuters, the survey included no less than 1,000 computer managers who revealed that the employees of their companies are often able to download files from the Internet although it's well known that they can get the systems infected. As expected, the most dangerous threats are represented by the social networking services such as MySpace and Facebook which are famous for the huge amount of users registered for accounts. In fact, it was said that no less than 250,000 new users create Facebook accounts every day so it's pretty obvious that these services are popular.

"More than half said they feared that music files and other security threats could spread viruses that may lead to fraud or damage corporate computer networks," Reuters wrote in the article published today. "Two-thirds of IT managers polled said they do not block employees from taking music off the Web, even though they named it as the biggest threat."

In the past, security company Sophos revealed that numerous companies choose to block the access to YouTube and to other similar services because spending too much time on these technologies could affect the productivity and could reduce the employees' efficiency.

But downloading things from the Internet without having a security solution installed on the computer is pretty risky these days when the threats are aiming to exploit every single vulnerability discovered in the programs.

For example, it was reported today that the viruses are spreading by copying themselves on USB flash drives and by installing the threats on new computers once the devices are connected to the systems.