• by Gavin O'Malley , April 16, 2010

Get back to work! A full 6.8% of all the URLs accessed by businesses goes to Facebook, and 10% of Internet bandwidth goes to YouTube, according to a new report from Network Box. “The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work,� Simon Heron, internet security analyst for Network Box, tells SC Magazine UK. “There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity.� The study, which analyzed 13 billion URLs accessed by businesses, found Facebook and Youtube leading other companies like Google and Yahoo. The report also found that Google attracted 3.4% of all URLs, followed by Yahoo’s image server YIMG at 2.8%, while Yahoo itself attracted 2.4%. DoubleClick, meanwhile, got 1.7% of all URL traffic, which was attributed to its massive network of banner ads. In the traffic category, Facebook used 4.5% of all bandwidth, Windows Update used 3.3%, and Google used 2.5%.