Orange County Register

Employees, on average, plan to spend almost two working days — 14.4 hours — shopping online in November and December, according to a survey for ISACA, a trade group for information technology professionals.

That compares with less than 5 hours in the 2008 survey,  called “Shopping on the Job: Online Holiday Shopping and Workplace Internet Safety.”

Tell us if you shop from work and then read on:

In a separate survey of 1,500 ISACA members, 25% estimate the productivity loss from online holiday shopping at work at $15,000 or more per employee.

This group cares about the potential security issues of online shopping including  viruses, spam and phishing attacks that can cost thousands of dollars per employee in lost productivity and potentially millions of dollars in destruction or compromise of corporate data.

Employers should take steps to protect their computers because they’re not going to be able to block online shopping completely, ISACA says.

“With the Internet now available to almost any employee in the workplace, it’s unrealistic to think that companies can completely stop the use of work computers for online shopping,” said ISACA Vice President Robert Stroud. “What companies can and should do is educate employees about the risks of online shopping and remind them of their company’s security policy. This is especially important this year, when the convenience of shopping online may be very appealing to employees whose workloads have doubled or tripled because of downsizing.”

Half of all workers surveyed plan to do their holiday shopping online with 10% expecting to spend at least 30 hours shopping online at work.

The biggest reasons for shopping at work: convenience, cited by 34% of respondents, and boredom, mentioned by 23%.

Employees who shop online at work are also likely to do other online activities that expose the company computers to potential problems:

• 51% bank online from work
• 40% click on e-mail links redirecting them to shopping sites
• 15% click on links from social network sites

Here are some ISACA tips for employees to reduce the risk of spam, viruses and accidental downloading of backdoor agents that can highjack corporate data:

• Use your desktop PC, not your mobile device, to shop, because your desktop browser is likely to be more secure.
• Protect sensitive information, like credit card numbers, by password-protecting both your mobile device and its memory card.
• Make sure you update your anti-virus and anti-malware programs continually.
• Treat social networking sites with the same caution as other web sites—social sites are a growing target for fraudsters and virus writers.
• Be cautious of special offers. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Fake online offers and coupons may lead to harmful sites, so be suspicious.

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