As long as you’re doing your job well, don’t abuse it, and you’re not doing anything illegal, it’s just a motivational factor. Spending 5 minutes looking at the BBC or CNN while you’re waiting for your print job to come through is fine; spending 15 minutes looking at a porn site isn’t.
But people do get caught and fired. I’ve been involved in a number of such cases - obviously I can’t give details.
Depends on the company. The truth is any half-way savvy computer person can 100% get around any technology the IT department sets up. AND improved company security. If the IT folks can find this out, this proves a major security hole in these IT folks just know TOO MUCH and would be dangerous if a competitor was able to pay them to act as spies. Paying spies is usally FAR more effective hacking.
I’d suggest to the big boss they fire the current batch of IT folks who didn’t try to teach other employees good security practices. For example, if the IT folks could get this information, then I could get it by figuring out how to hack auth as an IT person. The company could be sitting ducks if I could somehow get an IT level password. FAR better if I had no way to get access to enough secure data to be able to sell it to the competition.