Employees plan to spend nearly two full working days (14.4 hours) on average shopping online from a work computer this holiday season, according to a survey conducted on behalf of ISACA, a nonprofit association of 86,000 information technology professionals.

According to the survey, one out of every 10 plans to spend at least 30 hours shopping online at work. The survey is based on online polling in September 2009 of 1,210 U.S. consumers and 1,513 IT professionals who are ISACA members in nine countries. The study is designed to capture insights about online holiday shopping at work and employee compliance with workplace policies governing online shopping, ISACA says.

The potential danger of shopping online is that it can open the door to viruses, spam and phishing attacks that invade the workplace and cost enterprises thousands per employee in lost productivity and potentially millions in destruction or compromise of corporate data, the organization says. Employees who shop online using a work computer are also likely to engage in other high-risk behaviors. Survey participants reported they also bank online (51 percent), click on e-mail links redirecting them to shopping sites (40 percent) and click on links from social network sites (15 percent). Yet nearly one in five says they are not concerned that their online shopping habits may affect the safety of their organization’s IT infrastructure, according to ISACA.