Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to send the occasional personal email at work? What about a little internet shopping or spending some time on social networking sites, playing online games, downloading pirated movies and music, gambling or downloading porn? The internet has created new opportunities for mischief and new challenges for managers.

Monitoring and filtering inappropriate use may seem to be the lesser of two evils compared with blocking access to large parts of the internet. Having blocked the worst websites, you may wish to trust your employees’ judgment. You may want to allow employees access to social networking sites if it means that they can organize their social life without spending hours on the phone. You might also allow people to shop online if it saves them time and lets them achieve a better work-life balance.

Keep in mind, when you decide to allow employees access to the internet, it is in your best interest to ensure that they are aware of the laws around electronic communications in the workplace. The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) makes it clear that a company-provided computer system is the property of the employer. U.S. employers have the legal right to monitor all employee computer activity, transmissions and content- including incoming, outgoing and internal email messages, as well as web surfing, downloads and uploads. Making sure your employees are aware of the laws surrounding internet usage may encourage them to use better judgment when surfing the net.

Web misuse can have serious implications for your business:

• Reduced productivity. If employees spend their time on a social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, they’re not spending it doing their job.

• Security problems. Malware hides on websites and can install itself as users browse infected pages. Reports show that the number of new, malicious websites blocked nearly doubled (91 percent) in just one month with 3,968 new sites intercepted daily.

• Legal risks. When users download inappropriate material to their computers other employees may take serious offense which in turn can create legal liabilities for managers.

• Wasted bandwidth. Internet connections cost money. If half your bandwidth is taken up with non-work related web traffic, you could potentially be paying twice as much as you need to and your business-critical communications could be running at half their speed capacity.

• Unlicensed software. When users download and install software from the internet, they create a legal risk. Software piracy is illegal. If an organization uses illegal copies of software, it may face a civil suit and company directors risk criminal penalties.

• Reputation risk. Social networking can create opportunities for employees to leak confidential information or spread damaging rumors online. Bad behavior by a single employee can reflect on the reputation of the whole organization.

In the end, it comes down to choice. Where do you draw the line? How do you balance individual access with the overall protection and good of the business? What is the correct balance between monitoring and blocking? There is no right answer. It varies from company to company. My advice, invest in a good internet filtering platform.  It will save you time, money and a lot of headaches in the long run.