Over the past few years there has been some debate in Washington over the need to regulate use of P2P software on government networks, because of data leak fears, he said.

A recommends measures federal agencies for governing the use of P2P software on federal agency and contractor networks, he said.

The question now is whether the time has come to transition the directive into a formal law with Congressional oversight or let it remain an executive directive, he said.

The difference right now is that if a federal agency is not complying with the OMB directive it remains an executive branch concern. "The debate is whether it should be done by law or by directive," he said.

Either way, the time has come for greater oversight over the use of file-sharing tools on government and contractor networks, especially because more government workers are logging into to work from home, these days Sydnor said. Care needs to be taken to ensure that any law that is crafted not "sweep in" useful file-sharing technologies as well, he added.