According to Blue Coat Systems firms' bandwidth is being hogged by onsite workers, while remote workers, who need fast and secure access to online systems find their web use throttled and connections disappointing.

A survey carried out by research firm e-Media on behalf of Bluecoat found that remote workers were the least likely of all staff to use the company network for non-work related activities, but also, that they were the biggest security risk – being most likely to be the vessels for malware within a company network. Sales teams were voted the most likely to abuse systems.

"You might assume that it is your remote workers that would be abusing company systems, but they are not. Perhaps they are more acutely aware of what happens when you hog bandwidth," said Nigel Hawthorn vice president of marketing at the firm.

"The survey shows that the remote office security and performance issue is not due to the users themselves downloading inappropriate content on non-work related activities. On the contrary, it reveals a need for organisations to more carefully consider the needs of remote and branch workers in deploying applications remotely or over the internet.

IT departments need to plan for all eventualities," he added, "You have to look at the people that you employ and give them the service they need to do their jobs."