Get Off Facebook, Now!

September 30, 2007

More and more companies are blocking access to Facebook and other social networking sites via their networks. According to a ScanSafe report on web security the amount of business that are blocking social networking sites has risen by 17% over the last 12months.

So why? Well apart from staff spending too much time on these sites when they should be working. Companies are recognising security threats that come with the social networking phenomenon. Malware issues are bound to arrive within environments with large amounts of network users as well as attracting malicious attacks from hackers using social networks to obtain IP addresses and personal information.

On the flip side I have heard of incidents with friends of mine who have had their social network profiles scrutinised as part of a recruitment process. Other uses include business to business networking in some senses, although I haven`t come across this as of yet.

From my point of view it all comes down to having a clear and precise network and Internet usage policy that is communicated to staff in a manner that they understand. If this is in place then security issues can be decreased, bandwidth can be saved and it can take the hassle away from monitoring things that could otherwise be avoided.

Martin
Natural SEO Project Manager

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1 Comment

  1. Thank heavens for that - I thought it was just me that wasn’t getting this! Other than being a waste of time, I just couldn’t understand why Google et al would see this as a good idea - easy to abuse, low quality content and highly spammable.

    Comment by mark December 4, 2007 @ 6:02 pm

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