Social Networking at Work

Do you have a MySpace or Facebook site? Do you access it from your computer at work? Social networking sites like these are one of the next challenges facing information security administrators. There are potential business advantages to sites like LinkedIn, and social networking in general can be leveraged to be business networking which could lead to new partnerships or customers. On the other hand, social networking sites can be a vector for malware attacks and information leakage that companies need to guard against. According to a recent study, 23% of the respondents ban or block social networking sites altogether, but the majority- 59% - have no policy at all regarding social networking. Companies should definitely have a policy on the acceptable use of social networking, but the 23% that have banned them outright should probably re-examine the potential upsides and develop a policy that helps the company experience the benefits while protecting against the security issues. Take a look at Web 2.0 Applications Require Security Rethink from the Network Observations blog.