In its report released yesterday, the company claims that the number of P2P web pages has increased more than 300% in the last 12 months, totalling more than 89,000.
While trading MP3s remains a popular activity, other content is gaining. More than 5 billion music files were downloaded from P2P networks last year, according to research firm The Yankee Group, yet more than 5 million video game downloads also occurred last year, according to game developer Trymedia.
Websense estimates that 400,000 to 600,000 copies of movies are downloaded each day. In addition, approximately three million users download their favourite TV programmes from KaZaA every day, the company claims.
According to Websense, which develops software to control employee access to file-swapping sites, 64% of US companies do not monitor music or video downloads. "While this", the company claims, "may be free for end users, it comes at a huge cost to corporations in the form of wasted bandwidth, gaping security holes and serious emerging legal issues."
Websense warns businesses that, applications acquired through insecure P2P protocols communicate directly with other users' computers. For this reason, they often bypass a company's internet firewalls, and enter the corporate IT systems without being scanned for viruses or malicious code.
According to Websense, P2P applications could be used by corporations as an innovative way of maximising IT resources. But the company claims that, at present, P2P is primarily used for illegal swapping of copyrighted material.