Businesses Struggle To Control Social Networking 131
Lucas123 writes "Businesses in highly regulated industries are trying to strike a balance between workers who use social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate, and trying to satisfy federal requirements to monitor, capture, and audit all forms of electronic communications. As with instant messaging a decade ago, corporations are first blocking all access to the applications, and then considering what tools may be available to control them in the future. A cottage industry is being built around software that can not only control access to social networking websites but also ensure conversations over those websites can be stored for electronic discovery purposes."
Re:Why not block them entirely? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much any company that produces a product has a justification for having at least some of their employees involved in social networking. I work for an organization that lives and dies by public perception and participation. A portion of our communications department is devoted to social networking.
As the person in charge of IT policy, I fought against giving people access for the longest time. I based my argument on the security considerations of social networking sites (Flash exploits, Javascript vulnerabilities, etc.) I eventually lost the battle because I can see the compelling reasons to allow access. The pros outweigh the cons in my particular organization. I had to setup an extra layer of redundency including up to date workstation images and additional security software (proxy / webfilter, etc). I'd rather block the sites entirely but in the end it wasn't my call.
Re:Why not block them entirely? (Score:3, Informative)
It's usually in the comments that I find gems of knowledge (or stupidity), not the stories.
For gems of stupidity I just wait until kdawson's shift.