According to a new report published by Sophos today, Facebook now poses the greatest security risk to companies among the leading social networks. Of the 500 firms which were polled, 60 percent “felt that Facebook was the biggest danger”. Why is Facebook such a security threat? For a number of reasons including malware, spam and phishing, employee behavior which increases risk, and potential loss of data made public on Facebook.
It’s not exactly surprising to find that the majority of executives believe Facebook is the biggest security risk among other social networks, as the vast majority of individuals are on Facebook. In terms of monthly active users, Facebook is approximately ten times larger than Twitter, although the two are often compared side by side. With Facebook’s rapid growth, how are companies supposed to protect themselves. Sophos makes the following recommendations:
Social networking sites are now a vital part of many marketing and sales strategies. Therefore, they cannot be blocked—but they cannot be allowed to drain company resources or used as vectors for data loss or malware penetration. A unified approach providing sensible, granular access control, secure encryption and data monitoring, and comprehensive malware protection is mandatory for businesses to operate flexibly in the modern socially networked world.
Another interesting finding from the report was that the United States continue to serve as “the main hosting ground for malicious webpages.” The company thoroughly explores the numerous security threats to users in their latest report which you can download here if you are interested in more information.
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this study is a joke… as your commentary alluded to, the risk is amongst the other social networks, not whether or not they even think its a major risk in the first place. A company might not view social networks as a threat at all, but if they're forced to pick one as having the biggest risk, that's a no brainer. I'm surprised it's not higher.
Comment by steve — February 2, 2010 @ 10:21 am
Uh…ok… I'm pretty sure just ranks the social networks by popularity.
Comment by Jason — February 3, 2010 @ 5:09 am
I think that security firms don't have the moral authority to criticize social networks, besides, this isn't even a serious study, is like asking: From the following three terrorist groups, between ETA, Al Qaeda or the Colombian FARC, which one do you think is the most dangerous.
Comment by Oliver Ivan Pozas Qu — February 3, 2010 @ 7:01 am
Why can't corporations block social network access for their emplyoees? Is it against the law to block web sites?
Comment by Tiago Freitas Leal — February 25, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
This is NOT a joke. wake up people. Open a book and read. It’s not jut about YOU. This isn’t like somebody decided to censor you ‘just because’. You may not understand how worms and malware work. In fact most all of the comments posted here are for the most part naive. Bot Nets are the primary concern. The March issue of Mac World ran a really good article on this.
Comment by shazzer62 — March 5, 2010 @ 7:12 am
If cyber security firms see real risks to thier with FB they have every right to be critical.
Comment by chuck — June 11, 2010 @ 12:20 pm
This is a dumb report. Corporate America obviously thinks that FB is the biggest risk because it's the biggest player. How about an article that actually analyzes real risks posed to the different social medias?
Comment by karen — August 17, 2011 @ 10:51 am