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OSHA Standards for the Construction Industry as of August 2009 
This book contains the occupational safety and health standards for the construction industry promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), effective July 1, 2009.
Better take another look at your computer and Internet acceptable use policies before the holiday season gets any closer. Fully half of surveyed employees plan, on average, to spend nearly two full working days (14.4 hours) shopping online from a work computer this holiday season, according to a survey conducted on behalf of ISACA, a nonprofit association of 86,000 information technology professionals. One in 10 plans to spend at least 30 hours shopping online at work. Convenience (34 percent) and boredom (23 percent) are the biggest motivators, according to those polled.
Despite an economy expected to show flat or declining holiday retail sales, the second annual Shopping on the Job: Online Holiday Shopping and Workplace Internet Safety survey found that fully half of those surveyed plan to shop online for the holidays using a work computer. Less surprising is that the number of employees who are unsure about whether they will spend more or less time shopping online compared to a year ago has doubled.
In addition to the obvious loss of productive work time, the potential danger of shopping online is that it can open the door to viruses, spam and phishing attacks that invade the workplace and cost enterprises thousands per employee in further lost productivity–and potentially millions in destruction or compromise of corporate data.
It’s not just shopping that you need to worry about. Employees who shop online using a work computer are also likely to engage in other high-risk behaviors. Survey participants also bank online (51 percent), click on e-mail links redirecting them to shopping sites (40 percent) and click on links from social network sites (15 percent). Yet nearly one in five says they are not concerned that their online shopping habits may affect the safety of their organization’s IT infrastructure.
“With the Internet now available to almost any employee in the workplace, it’s unrealistic to think that companies can completely stop the use of work computers for online shopping,” said Robert Stroud, international vice president of ISACA. But, he stressed that what companies can and should do is educate employees about the risks of online shopping and remind them of their company’s computer and internet use policies.
And it’s not just computers–it’s mobile devices too. The survey also found that more than one in 10 Americans who use a mobile work device such as a BlackBerry or iPhone plan to use it for holiday shopping. The increasing use of mobile work devices for personal business such as shopping can lead to additional security issues and exposure to data loss for a company.
The lines between work and personal data are becoming more and more blurred as a growing number of people check work e-mail from their own phone or PDA, or use a work-supplied mobile device to shop or update their Facebook page. As our mobility increases, so do the risks, noted the survey. But by better educating employees and communicating common-sense online policies, HR and IT can work together to better protect employee productivity and one of the most critical assets a company has–its IT systems.
Source: ISACA; www.isaca.org.
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