Social Media Marketing – Too Much of a Security Risk?
Small business owners understand the necessity to keep a finger on the instant pulse of their company through social media interaction. Some businesses were concerned that their employees’ daily social exchanges would result in a dangerous breach of security to their vulnerable corporate data.
And boy were they right! A survey or 803 IT professionals performed by the security firm Webroots identified that 80 percent of small businesses thought that social media sites such as Facebook, were a security threat. It also outlined that 73 percent of respondents thought that web-based threats would be more of a concern than e-mail threats. As a result some companies are scrambling to develop policies regarding social media sites and the ability of their employees to visit these sites.
Company Policies Regarding Social Media
To avoid any possibility of getting malware or other viruses companies develop strict specifications regarding social media interaction. Blocking social sites is not possible because they are necessary to monitor the success and advance product promotion. Some companies allow employees to have open social media interact while some prevent it altogether. Either way something is necessary to ensure that some type of policy is in place to ensure accountability and to provide a stringent method to provide protection to the company.
We gathered some tips on writing effective social media policies in this article: www.csoonline.com/article/505593/4_Tips_for_Writing_a_Great_Social_Media_Security_Policy
I agree that blocking isn’t particularly effective.
However, I recently found some security people testing proxying services — these will generally allow use of sites like Facebook but will disallow certain types of functionality that put the user/company at greater risk.
There’s the question of how to use social media in business. And there’s also the issue of companies/workplaces blocking employee access to social media apps on the enterprise network, which often happens out of fear and misunderstanding of risk.
Here’s a good whitepaper on the subject, it’s called “To Block or Not. Is that the question?”
http://bit.ly/9f8WOT
It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SharePoint, etc.)