The study - sponsored by Check Point and carried out in April by the Ponemon Institute - took in responses from around 2 100 IT and security professionals in the UK, the US, Australia, France and Japan. Four hundred of the respondents were in the UK, Infosecurity notes.
According to Check Point, researchers found that the use of social networking applications has significantly lowered the security posture for up to 82% of organisations surveyed.
Check Point says almost half (49%) of UK respondents believe that corporate employees rarely, or never, consider security when using Web 2.0 applications.
Security policies that are being broken include the downloading of content, internet browsing, uploading files, opening web links or engaging in social networking at work.
Interestingly, the Ponemon Institute says the 49% UK percentile agreed closely with respondents' answers from the US and Australia, at 52% and 48% respectively. In contrast, less than a quarter of respondents in France (22%) and Japan (24%) felt their users disregard security issues when browsing.
The report makes the interesting observation that 58% of the professionals surveyed in the UK and Australia said that Web 2.0 applications have a significant or very significant impact on the security posture of their companies.
Nick Lowe, Check Point's head of Western European sales, said that it is clear that IT security administrators are concerned about the impact of Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise, but they also need better tools to understand which applications employees are using for business purposes.
"Implementing a flexible solution that factors in specific group or individual needs provides the bridge between users and IT administrators, and ultimately encourages employees to be more cautious when web browsing, taking into account corporate security policies", he explained.
The report makes the observation that workplace inefficiencies, malware, data loss and viruses as the main threats caused by insecure use of Web 2.0 applications.
Because of these threats, 43% of those interviewed in the UK and Australia said consider minimising Web 2.0 security risks as a high or very high priority for their organisation.
In addition, the vast majority of them feel that the issue should be addressed over the next two to five years.