Using Deterrence to Mitigate Employee Internet Abuse

This study looks at the question of how to reduce/eliminate employee Internet Abuse. Companies have used acceptable use policies (AUP) and technology in an attempt to mitigate employees' personal use of company resources. Research shows that AUPs do not do a good job at this but that technology does. Research also shows that while technology can be used to greatly restrict personal use of the internet in the workplace, employee satisfaction with the workplace suffers when this is done. In this research experiment we used technology not to restrict employee use of company resources for personal use, but to make the employees more aware of the current Acceptable Use Policy, and measured the decrease in employee internet abuse. The results show that this method can result in a drop from 27 to 21 percent personal use of the company networks.