Dive Brief:

• This year, more employees are taking advantage of those holiday sales and discounts by shopping online at work, says CareerBuilder. The human capital management company’s annual survey found that 53% of workers are shopping online at work, up from 50% in 2015. Of that number, 43% spend an hour or more buying items.
• The survey also found that even more at-work shoppers, 49%, are using their smartphones and other electronic devices to shop, up from last year’s 42%. More than half, 54%, said they blocked some websites from employees, up 2% from last year.
• CareerBuilder reviewed and ranked the biggest shopping at work offenders by industry. IT workers topped the list at 68%, followed by financial services at 65% and sales at 63%.

Dive Insight:

The relatively low number of companies in the survey that forbid and enforce rules on nonwork-related activities is surprising and reflects growing attitudes toward work-life flexibility. This could also mean that shopping online at work is vertically widespread. If company higher-ups are shopping online at work, enforcing companywide restrictions on such activity might be difficult.

But threats can also lurk behind shopping deals. With Cyber Monday shopping set to take place on company computers, if any employees fall prey to lurking cyberthreats, they could infect corporate networks. Successful phishing schemes can unload ransomware across a network, causing a headache for IT departments. And those that do not have redundancy measures in place could suffer long term conseqeunces.