Web 2.0 and Social Networking

Controlling Employee Use and Abuse

Today, the online landscape is alive with participation and collaboration. In addition to Web 2.0 applications like IM, web conferencing, VoIP, and blogs, hundreds of social networking sites are available to anyone with a browser. Several have evolved into full-blown development platforms - Facebook alone supports almost 50,000 applications, known as 'widgets'. And well over one hundred million people have personal pages or profiles on at least one social networking site. Many companies are finding ways to use these public utilities for internal use and collaboration. Shutting them down completely is not viable which makes controlling employee use and employee abuse of them absolutely critical.

All this openness and collaboration between social and business networks means many more opportunities exist for business assets and intellectual property to leave the safety of the corporate environment, and many more opportunities for unauthorized and unethical entities to gain access.

Left unsecured and unmanaged, widespread use of Web 2.0 applications and social networking can:

• Create holes for information leakage, resulting in the loss of confidential information
• Expose organizations to legal liabilities and financial penalties from compliance breaches
• Compromise network security from malware spread through real-time channels
• Increase help desk calls and support costs
• Cause network bandwidth overload with file sharing

And then there are the additional productivity issues resulting from non-business-related use of Web 2.0 and social networks during the workday.

For in-depth research on more than 2,000 Web 2.0 applications plus tens of thousand so social networking widgets, visit greynetsguide.com.

A recent survey undertaken by FaceTime and New Diligence clearly illustrates the extent to which social networks are becoming embedded in the business environment. Over 93% of organizations have some level of social networking use on their network.

Social networking activities are so wide-ranging that companies are clearly struggling to find appropriate policies to govern this new environment. Almost half the respondents in the survey know the use of social network sites, understand the risks and do not have policies in place to manage their use. As the line between corporate networks and social networks blurs, so the issue of social networks and their applications - many of which involve online communications - becomes an issue for enterprise IT.

Social Security Challenge

FaceTime's Unified Security Gateway (USG) is a complete secure web gateway; combining fine-grained web application control and real time communications security with content filtering and malware protection.

USG enables organizations to set up custom policies across multiple communications modalities - from IM, peer to peer networks, social networking applications and web traffic. USG integrates with LDAP and Active Directory servers to provide simplified group policy setting. Granular controls include quota setting by employee, time and bandwidth - across all real time communications modalities - including instant messaging and social networking sites. Customizable reporting capabilities provide for detailed analysis on employee web browsing and application usage by time spent, data downloaded and instant messaging content transferred.

USG enables companies to safely let their employees use FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and other personal and professional social networking sites. With USG, enterprises can:

• Manage access to and use of applications within social networking sites like Facebook according to established acceptable use policies
• Lower the risks from inbound threats and outbound data leakage
• Meet employee needs without impacting productivity or security
• Maintain regulatory compliance through logging and archival
• Keep protection on track with dynamic updates of new social networking sites and applications hosted by those sites
• Benefit from a single point for enablement, access management, security and control for web and real-time channels
• Protect investment in security today by providing a platform on which future web-borne threat prevention can be built

With flexible deployment options, USG fits seamlessly into existing network topologies to offer the highest level of security with zero latency and a low total cost of ownership.

Learn more about Unified Security Gateway.