Study: Web2.0 and business data security risk
Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 19:46 Clearswift, a company specialised in security products has released its survey results on the potential danger of information leaks using Web2.0 technology in companies.
They polled more than 1,000 business employees in the UK and found that:
27 per cent of office workers aged 18-29 spend three or more hours a week using and accessing Web 2.0 sites when at work
42 per cent of office workers aged 18-29 have discussed work-related issues on social media websites
Their press release concludes that there is a definite risk that business information and maybe confidential information could leak through the use of web2.0 technology.
"Whilst organisations have woken up to the security risks with email traffic, this awareness is not always extended to the bi-directional communications which are common in Web 2.0," says Katie Gotzen, Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
While I do believe that leakage of information goes faster these days than let's say before the printer & fax era, I do not think that the inherent risk has increased.
Security policy and knowing what can be discussed and what not is before anything else a matter of training and education. So called business conduct guidelines need to be in place at the company and enforced when needed. Again, it is about people and not technology.
We have lived in a copy/paste world for more than a decade now and it is not because we suddenly introduce internal blogs and wikis that we've opened the gate through which our company secrets can escape.
I have been reading Internalmemos.com for years now. They collected their internal info before anyone was talking blogs or web2.0 and they have created a business model out of it. Another good site like this is Fuckedcompany.com, recently acquired by Techcrunch.
What do you think ? Will the internal use of social media in companies increase the risk for information leaks ?
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