The Death Star, as apt metaphor for your network

While viruses and spam are normally the most dreaded calamities to befall a company's network, starting yesterday an unlikely threat emerged: George Lucas.

In anticipation of the opneing of "Episode III – Revenge of the Sith," thousands of people logged onto peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like BitTorrent to download an illegal sneak peek. The third and final Star Wars prequel was available online mere hours after the movie opened in theaters.

Fun, right? Not for your network administrator. Office file sharing can suck bandwidth away from normal operations and slow down a company’s network. Small businesses in particular may suffer, especially those that rely on asynchronous DSL, which can be crippled by the kind of heavy uploading required by P2P software.

Worse, file swapping can leave companies open to security threats and potential lawsuits, says Francis Costello, head of marketing at San Diego-based Akonix Systems, which provides messaging and network security software to large companies. "If I put BitTorrent on a machine and I share the wrong directory I could allow people access to confidential corporate data," says Costello.

Also worth remembering: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) could pursue litigation against companies whose employees share movies at work. The scenario is, to be sure, unlikely--but it's not as farfetched as you may think. In 2001, the Recording Industry of America sued Arizona-based Integrated Information Systems for allowing employees to use P2P networks at work -– the suit was settled according to CNET.

While the MPAA has yet to follow the RIAA's litigious lead, it has recently stepped up its anti-piracy campaign, announcing that it is suing individuals who have downloaded only a single movie.

So what can businesses owners do? Akonix, along with several other companies, offers what Costello called "perimeter security" -- basically a sophisticated firewall that blocks users from connecting through P2P networks or downloading unauthorized files via instant messaging software.

Short of that, you may want to consider the methadone clinic approach to the problem, and spring for Sith tix for all of your employees.

Senior contributing writer Max Chafkin has profiled companies such as Yelp, Zappos, Twitter, Threadless, and Tesla for the magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. @chafkin