“I don’t know how to tell you this,” comes the reply. “I fixed Dwayne’s machine.” She pauses.

“What was wrong with it?” You are sensing this is a dangerous question but you don’t know why.

“Well, it had a lot of junk clogging up the hard drive. I cleaned it up.” She looked as if she wanted to bolt out of the room.

What kind of “junk”? Now you want to know!

“His hard drive had about 100 GB worth of porn…”

Now what do you do?

Porn is a big problem in the workplace. Three percent of Americans admit to watching porn at work, so you have to take it seriously. Employers have a legal obligation to prove they are taking all reasonable practical measures to protect staff from inappropriate material. Companies and individual executives face criminal prosecution if employees are found using the company’s computer equipment or network to distribute porn, or they fail to prevent employees from downloading pornography into the workplace.

Beyond your legal obligation, there is a moral issue as well. You may not care what employees are doing in the privacy of their own homes, but their behavior at work is clearly your responsibility. Pornography, or any sexually explicit material, raises issues of professionalism, productivity, and information security, damaging your company’s reputation and profitability. Further, it is toxic to the kind of healthy, diverse, creative, safe and productive environment you want to develop in your company.

OK, it’s a big problem, now what do you do?

• Address the individual. The person involved needs to know that this behavior is unacceptable and must end. It’s a company computer and a company network, and the employee should have no expectation of privacy. Let them know that you will be adding monitoring software and you will take disciplinary action, including termination, if it continues.
• Create a policy (if you don’t have one). You need to make sure that your handbook and company policies address this issue clearly. Make sure it’s clear that it’s unacceptable, and what actions you will take.
• Add a filter to your network. There are very simple solutions that actually provide very good security. (We use OpenDNS but there are lots of solutions.) Don’t forget to do something about filtering your email as well!

Porn is a growing problem, even in the workplace. It’s better to be proactive and take these steps now before you have a problem.