But companies aren't being driven by a sense of morality as much as by business concerns. If employees are free to download and distribute offensive material at work, their employer could end up being sued for having vicarious liability in sexual or racial harassment cases. It isn't surprising, then, that new players are jumping into the market.
Filters now can monitor more than just pornography and racism.
Employers can check whether unsatisfactory employee productivity is the result for employees using their work PCs to book a holiday, shop, gamble, trade stock online, or even look for a new job. Employees intentionally passing on sensitive company information can be identified. Finally, inefficient use of the expensive corporate network and Internet connections can be curbed because Net surfing places an extra demand on precious bandwidth. Corporate customers of such filter makers as Biodata, Websense Inc. , Secure Computing Corp. buy both blocking and administration software. Customers also pay a subscription fee to receive an updated control list of URLs.