ESniff.com.

• Author: BRONIKOWSKI, LYNN
• Position: Brief Article

Sniffs out cyberslacking

Ninety percent of America's workforce surfs the Internet for fun during business hours. Seven out of 10 visits to pornography sites are made between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and U.S. companies last year lost $5.3 billion to recreational web surfing. John Conlin, chief operating officer of Littleton-based eSniff.com Inc., rattles off those statistics from a number of sources. Then he waves a fresh Associated Press story in the air. It's about Dow Chemical Co. firing 50 workers and disciplining 200 others for e-mailing pornography and violent images from company computers.

"The Internet offers instantaneous access to almost anything in the world, whether it's pornography, inappropriate e-mails, or shopping," said Conlin. "Yet, most companies give employees unlimited access to the Internet." Sooner or later, Conlin said, some of those companies will have a serious problem of misuse. He cites lawsuits, grievances, illegal activities, lost productivity and hurt morale among issues that "cyberslacking" may generate in the workplace. "It might just be a simple matter of lost productivity," said Conlin. "But it could be as serious as a multi-million-dollar lawsuit or corporate espionage."

But as quickly as Conlin points out potential problems, he is ready with a solution, and naturally it comes from his company. The eSniff 1000, he said, is a plug-and-play network monitoring device that catches people whose internet activities are inappropriate. It alerts managers without interfering, filtering, blocking or slowing down a company's network. The product is the...