Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are costing UK firms nearly £6.5 billion a year in lost productivity, says security consultancy Global Secure Systems (GSS) and Infosecurity Europe.

In a poll, 776 office workers admitted spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social networking sites at work. As a result companies face a loss in employee productivity and increased demand on bandwidth.

Ian Shipway, director of investment at Thinc Financial Planning, said that the 300 Thinc staff nationwide have not given him cause to worry about networking sites.
‘It’s not a problem that I am aware of at the moment. I do know that our IT department blocks some sites and can control what employees can and can’t access to some extent,’ he said. ‘Being a larger company we do have much stricter controls than a smaller company.’

In a meeting, 20 chief information security officers (CISOs) cited one of the biggest problems was how to manage these sites. Between 10% and 15% of their companies’ bandwidth was taken up by them and the CISOs were looking to ban sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and eBay.

They were also concerned that the amount of information available on social network sites could compromise firms and leave them vulnerable to hackers, exploiters and extortionists.

‘Our advice is to give as little personal information away as possible,’ said David Hobson, managing director of GSS.