Helping Your Boss Create an Internet$-$Use Policy

The online retail company where you work as an assistant to the information technology $($IT$)$ manager is doing well. It began as a tools and equipment company $30$ years ago, but it is now a popular seller of whimsical and hard$-$to$-$find items for home, garden, and fun$-$such as patio furniture, bug zappers, recreational accessories, remote$-$control toys, and novelty gadgets. Counting the three recent hires, the company now has $24$ full$-$time employees, with the largest departments being product procurement, sales, order fulfillment, and customer service. With this growth have come IT headaches. Employees are visiting sites that lock up their computers, downloading large and$/$or malicious files, and even including proprietary information in some of their Internet$-$based correspondence. While it's important to the business for the employees to have free access to the Internet, it's also important that they use it safely and for the benefit of the company.

It's time for an Internet$-$use policy, and your boss thinks you're just the person to help write it$.$ Your assignment is to study the current wisdom on workplace Internet policies and send your findings to him in an email report. He will use the report as the basis for a meeting with the chief operations officer on the subject next week.