According to Sarah Carter, marketing communications manager with Facetime, the company that undertook the research, whilst 61% of firms view malware are their greatest security risk, the actual risk appears to be staff usage of social networking sites, instant messaging and internet telephony.
The problem with social networking sites, she said, is that it is very unlikely that someone would use a different computer for their various forms of communications, so the rising usage of web 2.0 services poses a potentially serious security risk for companies.
"When we started our annual survey of company internet usage back in 2005, Facebook was still very new. Today the service has 400 million users, 35 million of whom update on a daily basis", she said, adding that the numbers of staff accessing their Facebook account from work is clearly a worry.
Delving into the security research from Facetime reveals that, whilst 90% of firms expected their staff to be using Facebook from work (the perception), it was actually 100% of firms where staff were using the service (the reality).
And whilst 10% of firms thought their staff were using IPTV services, it was actually 95% researchers found. Sixty-six percent of firms, meanwhile, thought their staff were using instant messaging services when the real figure was 98%.
So why are staff using instant messaging? According to Facetime's research, 46% of people said its immediacy, whilst 13% said private chat, was the most useful feature. And 41% said that instant messaging allowed them to get rapid answers to their questions.
Carter says that 69% of firms admitted they had experienced a security incident involving web 2.0 services, whilst 14% had had a data loss incident involving social networking sites.
So what are the main business risks with staff use of the internet?
Facetime's research revealed that the major risks are data leakage, incoming security threats, compliance issues, and user behaviour.
The conclusions of the firm's research seems to suggest that companies are failing to grasp the reality that workers are using a variety of web 2.0 services across the firm's internet connection, with a major (100% plus) variance between company perception and reality of employees using web-based file sharing facilities.
The complete details of Facetime's research, which collated responses from more than 200 companies of varying sizes in December, will be published next month.