Perspectives & Strategy

According to Dave Webb, Editor of ComputerWorld Canada “The new web means new security threats, and new ways of dealing with them”. It is true that new ways of working with the web brings new challenges, in fact this is true with almost anything we care to do with systems. In some respects there seems to be a constant question raised “Should we be doing that?” precisely because of issues like security threats, but the wheels of progress keep turning. Web 2.0 is largely an unstoppable train, albeit little thought or planning has gone into its production. Corporations are now having to define policy on its use.

Now I am not saying that the Developments in Social Media are bad, far from it – I for one am wholeheartedly involved in this particular revolution. One CTO recently told me that what scares her about the whole Web 2.0 challenge is that you can drive a bus through the gaping whole in security involved. It seems that Security is always playing catch-up with all of the latest technologies. Security is always one of those topics that is often considered too much as an afterthought.

One demographic of interest is that for FaceBook, arguably the world’s largest Social Networking tool the fastest growing segment of the user community is the 50 to 59 age bracket (ironically followed by the 60+ and the 40 to 49 age ranges). These age ranges are likely to include the key decision makers within your corporation. So even your corporate CEO may be getting themselves a Twitter account.

According to UPI researchers are encouraging the U.S. DoD to develop a strategy to use social media to strengthen national security, thus they can see the potential for using the Twitter stream, or Facebook chatter to respond to incidents around the world. Obviously there are concerns about anyone tweeting secrets, whether they be business secrets or ones involving national security. However the same argument could have been made years ago with the advent of the fax machine, email or any other tool that has revolutionised communications. The challenge has simply changed to a newer technology.

Net security firm Sophos stated that according to a recent poll “63% of system administrators worry that employees who share too much personal information on social networking sites will put their company’s IT infrastructure at risk”. But ironically these same business stand to gain so much by actively participating in Social Media. It is suggested that too much information is shared through our profiles.

To me this seems another case of need to set reasonable corporate guidelines in use and publicising/communicating these within the organisation.