I read this article this morning: Safer Internet Day: How children can undermine corporate security and it actually reminds me of all the PCs I looked at in my private environment. When I see a heavily infected PC, the parents always keep telling me that the Peer-to-Peer network software on the PC was installed by the kids and that they are downloading software. This is a problem at home – but definitely a bigger one on your corporate notebook.
What can you do to prevent this? Well, you could lock down the notebooks – and make it impossible for people to work anymore. I think much more it is about awareness as well as enforcing policy compliance. It is pretty obvious that if somebody runs illegal copies of software on a corporate asset, this puts you as a company at legal risk. Therefore, it might make sense to run a Software Inventory and check regularly for such software – an then kick off the corresponding administrative processes.
Roger