Social Networking Rated a Top Security Risk
I don’t know who coined the term “IT consumerization,” but it is a pretty good descriptor of what’s happening in the business world. Personal devices, purchased by employees, are flooding the work place. Employees are pressuring IT to let them use unsupported mobile devices and social networking apps. Ding, ding, ding. Security bells are ringing all over the place. Just how much does IT worry? A lot.
According to a Cisco poll, more than half of the 500 IT security pros who participated in the survey confirmed that employees use unsupported applications. Social networking topped the list:
• Social networking - 68 percent
• Collaborative - 47 percent
• Peer to peer - 47 percent
• Cloud - 33 percent
51% listed social networking as one of the top three biggest security risks to their organization, and 19% considered it the highest risk. You could say it’s the gorilla in the IT department.
Source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/3055802287/
As Bob Dylan said, the times they are a-changing. Not so long ago – and no, it wasn’t the Dark Ages – employees asked for time off to make a personal call or to run a personal errand. Now a day at work is unthinkable without texting, YouTube and Facebook. The debate goes on about the pros and cons of using personal devices at work. Some say they are a distraction that costs companies lots of money. Some say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth because people are more productive and the company doesn’t have to pay for the devices.
Regardless, personal devices and social networking pose special challenges for IT – lost devices, lost IP, security breaches, information leaks, bandwidth issues. Any one of them can be harmful and potentially expensive to address. This report gets into the issues with webmail and IM, bandwidth sucked up by social networking and file sharing.
If you’re in one of the five stages of grief – anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance – about “IT consumerization,” be sure to read this techtarget.com article. Forrester Research weighs in on some of the new ways to think about security.
BTW, if you haven’t already heard, Facebook recently decided to follow Google and other companies to pay people to turn in bugs in an effort to reduce security problems. Bounty hunting in the 21st century.
For an industry expert’s look at collaboration and social media trends (what do users really want?), be sure to attend the Wainhouse Research webinar, “Collaboration & Social Media: How to Tame User Anarchy.”