Local employers tighten restrictions on employee Web use

By PHILIP WALZER
The Virginian-Pilot

The city of Virginia Beach turned on an Internet filter system last week to block its employees from a range of computer sites and activities, from porn to instant messaging.

A few workers complained, but their arguments almost strengthened the city’s case, said Ernie Forni, the information security officer.

“They’re upset they’re not going to be able to get to some places,” he said, “but they don’t want to tell you where they want to go, because they know they’re not appropriate or business-related.”

Workplaces are moving to tighten policies – with more surveillance and more restrictions – on personal use of the computer in the office. Any declines in morale, executives and lawyers say, are more than offset by gains in productivity, computer network safety and legal protection.

Some companies – such as the Norfolk accounting firm of Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer – are even extending prohibitions into employees’ off-hours. It recently told its workers they couldn’t name their employer on their MySpace profiles.

“I’m seeing policies being revised by many employers across this country to explicitly address electronic communication in a more stringent way,” said Barry Chersky, a principal of Brinkman & Chersky Consulting based in California and New Mexico.

That’s partly because of the belated realization that companies could get into trouble for bad things that employees do on the computer.

For instance, they could face sexual harassment or defamation suits based on an offensive joke or photo that one worker e-mails to another, said John Bredehoft, an employment lawyer with Kaufman & Canoles.

Beyond the legal issues, “there can be an enormous productivity problem,” said Bredehoft, chairman of the Virginia Bar Association’s Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law. “Sometimes you find people who spend an hour on the Internet. That’s not as common as it used to be, but it’s still a concern.”

Tough regulations also have technological advantages: They limit the reach of hackers and viruses, and they help keep computer networks from getting overloaded.

“Content filtering helps you conserve bandwidth,” said Donald Fulton, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Bank of Hampton Roads.

Bredehoft said he’s seeing less concern about this issue among “small, entrepreneurial companies” and more from “the more established companies, where you have corporate managers who are risk-averse.”

He and Chersky advocate that bosses take a tough line.

“Most employers are not so interested in paying people to use lots of time to do personal business when they’re on the clock,” Chersky said. “… My question to people who feel like you’re taking away their rights is: Just what is it that you think you’re entitled to do when you’re on the job?”

Bredehoft, however, said that when he writes such policies, he always includes “an exception for occasional use” – such as e-mailing to make sure the kids got home from school.

An informal survey of a dozen local workplaces revealed a range of policies.

Northrop Grumman Corp. prohibits all personal use of the computer during the workday, spokeswoman Jennifer Dellapenta said. Zel Technologies in Hampton allows occasional use and monitors it, said Matthew Krug, the company’s chief information officer.

“We didn’t want to have a restrictive policy against it,” he said. “That’s not reality. You might have a situation where somebody needs to get hold of you if your house is being painted. It is a resource that can be used occasionally if the need arises.”

Most companies have a list of do’s and don’ts – sites that are and aren’t permissible. The banned subjects nearly always include pornography, hate groups and hacking.

Ferguson Enterprises bans electronic chain letters, gambling and “soliciting for personal gain or profit ” but permits shopping sites such as eBay or Amazon. Norfolk Southern Corp.’s list of prohibited sites includes computer games, dating services, chat rooms and Web-based e-mail but not religious, news or political sites.

Joy Rollins, a health care worker from Norfolk, said her workplace prohibits personal computer use. It’s not an issue, she said, since everyone’s too busy anyway. Ideally, she thinks it should be allowed during lunch or after hours.

That’s exactly the policy at Willcox & Savage, a local law firm, said managing partner Rob Dewey .

“As of right now,” Dewey said, “we have not done anything in terms of blocking specific sites on the Internet. We have a great group of employees. We trust them, and we know they have good judgment, and we let them use it.”

The city of Virginia Beach had already banned hacking, pornography and racist sites, Forni said. Last week, it added such subjects as Internet radio and TV and Web-based e-mail.

Those sites, Forni said, “offer no benefit but eat up bandwidth.”

The city also switched on the filtering system, from WebSense, to ensure that employees can’t get to such sites.

“We don’t want to clamp down on personal use,” Forni said. “It’s not really a problem. Really, this tool is to block inappropriate material from coming into the city. It gives us an extra layer of defense from viruses and attackers.”

The WebSense system, he said, cost $20,000, which is cheaper than “hiring a systems engineer to go through all of the logs and tools that you have.”

Cox Communications has what spokeswoman Pamela Marino described as a “loosely written policy” on personal computer use during the workday. “The bottom line here is whether it’s affecting your productivity.”

Cox does block access to the social networking site MySpace, she said, paralleling Cox’s community information programs warning about its dangers.

“We just decided it’s a site that could get somebody into trouble,” Marino said. “If you post stuff on MySpace, if you’re not careful, people can track you down.”

Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer had already banned MySpace at work. When Heather Sunderlin, the director of employee services, learned that most of its 30-and-under workers had MySpace profiles, executives at the firm wondered if they ought to do more.

In December, after checking with their lawyers, they required employees to delete references to the firm in their MySpace accounts.

Sunderlin hadn’t found anything offensive on the profiles, but Marty Einhorn, one of the firm’s principals, worried about workers’ safety, as well as linking his firm to any of the opinions expressed on MySpace.

“It’s not that we don’t support people going around and telling other people where they work,” he said. “We just see MySpace as a forum for communicating about your personal life. We don’t think we want to be associated with that, for good or bad.”

Another factor that crossed his mind: Could other firms use MySpace to raid his staff?

Einhorn acknowledged that his discomfort could be an age thing.

“The people who are dealing with it are the older generation,” he said. “The people who are doing it are the younger generation. … For the people of my generation, this is something very, very new. I’m not so sure we totally get it.”

Reach Phil Walzer at (757) 222-3864 or phil.walzer@pilotonline.com.