Businesses Crack Down on MyFace

[Sunite]

Businesses Crack Down on MyFace
By Frederick Lane
November 8, 2007 10:15AM

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According to Dean Drako, the president and CEO of Barracuda, the two top reasons cited by companies for blocking access to social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook are security (70 percent) and productivity (52 percent). Other reasons cited by companies for blocking the social networks include bandwidth issues and legal liability.

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   Security
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   A new study by Barracuda Networks, a California-based manufacturer of security Relevant Products/Services software and hardware, shows that more than half of all businesses block one or both of the Web's two most popular social-networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.

Four times as many companies -- nearly 25 percent -- block MySpace, while just one in five block employees from accessing both sites. Barracuda, incidentally, is one the companies in the latter category; its 350 employees are blocked from using social-networking sites.

Barracuda Networks conducted its study by analyzing data voluntarily submitted by more than 2,000 customers of the company's Barracuda Web Filter program.

"The fact that so many companies are blocking social-networking sites doesn't particularly bother me," said Lew Maltby, President of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. "Companies obviously have the right to make sure that their employees are being productive. Blocking sites is much less invasive of employee privacy than using software to read e-mails or monitor where employees go online."

Productivity, Safety Concerns

According to Dean Drako, the president and CEO of Barracuda, the two top reasons cited by companies for blocking access to social-networking sites are security (70 percent) and productivity (52 percent).

"Spyware is still a major concern," Drako said in the company's press release. "Although the full implications of spyware are not always understood, many customers worry about spyware effects on productivity and security, and therefore want protection."

Other reasons cited by companies for blocking social networking include bandwidth issues (36 percent) and potential legal liability concerns (28 percent).

"It's unrealistic to expect that employees won't do any personal Web surfing at work," Maltby said. "Rather than trying to prevent it altogether, companies should use software to enforce reasonable acceptable use policies." Maltby said that there are several programs that permit personal surfing by employees before and after work, and for specific periods during the day, while still blocking objectionable sites.

Growing Security Issue

The corporate concerns over social-networking sites are not misplaced. In August 2006, for instance, the antispyware company Webroot reported that social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook had contributed to a sharp rise in the incidence of spyware on the Web.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that users are more likely to download potentially suspect software when they think that they are among "friends." But the biggest challenge is that the tens of millions of users on social-networking sites are an irresistible target for spyware authors.

In July of this year, for instance, security specialists at iDefense, an antispyware company, discovered that a single banner ad on MySpace had infected over a million users with spyware used to track their usage and deliver pop-up ads.

Such software is dangerous enough when it delivers malware Relevant Products/Services to corporate networks, but the tracking capabilities of hidden software also raise serious concerns about corporate spying and theft of intellectual property.