Olympics warning to bosses

Employees using the Web to keep up with the Olympics will cost New Zealand businesses almost $15 million in lost productivity and expose them to malware and spam, Internet security companies say.

TVNZ will provide four online channels during the Olympics and Yahoo!7 of Australia, an official online Games broadcaster, will provide hundreds of hours of video.

Internet security company Marshal predicted employees browsing news websites and streaming events during the Games would cost companies just under $15 million in productivity.

"If one in 10 of New Zealand's 1.4 million employed people with an average hourly wage of $21.41 spend 30 minutes a day catching up on the Olympics for the 10 working days that it spans, the result will be more than 700,000 hours of lost productivity."

Secure Computing's Australia New Zealand country manager, Eric Krieger, said employees streaming video content through the Web would expose their employers' networks to threats such as phishing attacks.

Threats hidden in seemingly harmless website links could infiltrate address books to create spamming lists using e-mail addresses and there was likely to be Olympic-themed spam.

Businesses could set up a viewing area with a TV or a secure PC to allow employees to get their Olympics fix, Mr Krieger said.

Secure Computing had developed a system that checked websites before they were loaded.

Marshal's WebMarshal allows administrators to enforce their Internet policy by assigning employees time and bandwidth quotas and by blocking offensive or dangerous content.