Survey: IT Professionals Fear Social Media Use at Work May Pose Threat
Security vendor Websense, sponsored a global study in which 4,640 IT security professionals were asked their feelings regarding potential security risks associated with their employee's social media use at work. The study found that 63% of respondents agreed that social media represents a serious business risk, with 29% reporting that controls to manage these risks were inadequate.
While 85% of the respondents agree that social media use at work is an acceptable practice, more than half of these same respondents, or 65%, were unsure whether their respective companies had an adequate acceptable use policy in place. Moreover, these companies claim employee work product may be affected, as well as a significant decrease in company-wide bandwidth accessibility, since these social media tools are being used more often for non-business purposes, than for business, as reported in an article today by eWeek Europe.
“The challenge they face is how to ensure the use of social media vehicles does not jeopardise the security of their organisations’ networks,” Ponemon Institute, creators of the study, wrote in the report. A little over half, or 52%, of the respondents claim to have experienced an increase in malware attacks as a result of social media use in the workplace. Respondents claim a concern over what their employees may be inclined to post online, in addition to the potential threat of what they may download, and thereby expose their company to some security threat.
The Institute recommends that companies and IT professionals understand and educate personnel on appropriate social media use in the workplace, and to further create and understand a risk assessment and an appropriate and customary risk assessment policy for employee usage.
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