A quarter of work computers hold porn

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A quarter of work computers have digital pornography or other inappropriate images, according to an audit by PixAlert.

The firm scanned 10,000 computers belonging to 125 corporate and public sector organisations over the past nine months, finding inappropriate images on 25.8 per cent of computers.

The audit also found such images on 12.4 per cent of the 12,000 scanned email accounts and on 5.4 per cent of the 26,000 scanned file server shares.

"While all organisations actively discourage access to inappropriate images at work, our audits show that the reality is that all establishments have a lot of digital pornography residing on their networks that they don't know about," said Churley, marketing director at PixAlert, in a statement.

Nearly half of the images showed full nudity or sexual activity, while 0.3 per cent had illegal content.

Over a third of the images were from the internet, but nearly half were sourced from emails.

"It is clear that a significant number of employees continue to ignore corporate policies and in some cases are going to extraordinary lengths to bypass protection systems in order to obtain and distribute inappropriate material," said Churley.

Last week, IT PRO reported that nearly a third of companies in the UK do not have an acceptable use policy for staff internet usage.

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