Does your employer cramp your style surfing the web?

Saw two surveys recently dealing with similar issues.  The first was from Barracuda Networks.  Analyzing data from customers using Barracuda Web Filters, about half of all businesses were blocking MySpace and/or Facebook.  The reasons given for blocking these social networking sites were:

1. Virus/spyware prevention - 70%
2. Productivity drain - 52%
3. Bandwidth concerns - 36%
4. Liability concerns - 28%

Of course you have to remember that folks using web filtering are much more likely to filter access and content than those not using web filtering (Thank you Captain Obvious), so overall industry numbers are probably much lower than this.

This leads me to the second survey done by McAfee.  Their data shows that over 66% of IT managers said they do not block employees from downloading music from the web.  This in spite of the fact that music downloading is consistently at the top of the list of potential threats.

I think this highlights the dilemma that we in security and management face.  We want to protect our computers and network from harm and we want to stop productivity draining, non-work related time drains.  However, having too heavy a hand on what employees can and can't do on line can lead to morale issues.  A happy worker is after all, a productive worker (do you believe that?)