Posts Tagged ‘Network Security’

Your boss hates Farmville…

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

...not if you get fired first...

Despite warnings from employers and guidelines outlining proper company equipment usage, a recent study from Cisco indicates that Enterprise users continue to access social networking sites and tend their virtual crops in Farmville.

The study shows that of the employees surveyed, 50% confessed to ignoring social media policies at least once a week while 27% were guilty of reconfiguring settings on their corporate devices in order to access content and applications which were expressly forbidden by their employer. Of those verboten applications accessed, the number one application accessed was Farmville. Not far behind were games like Mafia Wars, Café World, and Treasure Isle.

The primary focus of the report is network security with Cisco demonstrating that one of the largest threats to Enterprise networks is Social Networking sites. Unsurprisingly, the document goes on to analyze the impact of social networking and the games it offers on workplace productivity. While the number of people who spent an excessive amount of time on Farmville and the like was below 10%, there was evidence that those individuals spent an average of 68 minutes per day tending their web crops while in the office. That comes out to approximately 295 hours a year. That’s 7.4 weeks out of the 52 week year. And you wonder why your boss gets grumpy when you Tweet from work…

The overall message of the report is that while social networking is a great tool for getting your company’s product into the public eye that allowing rampant use can not only lead to a loss of productivity but can open your business up to hackers and cybercriminals. Sadly, I see the persons who are most at risk on a daily basis, individuals who don’t lock down their personal information and happily open any attachment that comes their way.

If you’d like to see the full report, you can access it here.

[Source]

Gritskrieg – End of Line










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