Out-of-office workers visit more 'dodgy' websites

A study by web security firm ScanSafe showed that out-of-office staff looked at porn websites two and half times more often than their desk-bound colleagues, and were five and a half times more likely to visit sites featuring "extremely graphic content".

The research also revealed that sites covering illegal activities, such as information on building explosives, were viewed nearly four times more often by remote workers using their laptops.

ScanSafe's Spencer Parker commented: "It's no surprise that web habits change when staff are outside of the physical confines of the office and away from the watchful eye of bosses and colleagues.

"What is surprising is that there is such a huge increase in visits to what most firms would deem highly offensive websites, and in some cases, illegal content."

White paper

Spencer went on to warn that accessing illegal file sharing sites, porn sites and other questionable content was putting employers at risk of legal liability and exposure to malware.

"If employees are using a company laptop to download illegal music files from home, their bosses may be liable," he said. "Staff assume their web habits away from the office are unsupervised, however, the problem is that no matter where they are working, they could be putting their company at risk."

The data was taken from 8 billion web requests examined by ScanSafe in March on behalf of its customers.

Interestingly, there was one category of websites that remote employees were less likely to visit when they were out of the office - banking.

"A lot of people assume that security is much better in the office than at home or at Wifi hotspots," said Spencer Parker. "Also, people feel that being able to bank or shop online at work is much more acceptable nowadays as part of the overall work-life balance."

ScanSafe has published a new white paper - Roaming Workers: The Weakest Link in Corporate Web Security - which can be downloaded (pdf) here.