Banning social networking sites does not guarantee data safety in workplace -- study

CEBU, Philippines - Banning social networking sites in the workplace is now considered a less popular method in promoting productivity and ensuring IT security, a recent study revealed.

The study entitled “Global IT Security Risks: 2012” showed that companies are most likely to restrict access to online games, with 71 percent of the IT professionals surveryed saying this was part of their strategy.

The study further revealed that banning social networking sites, on the other hand, is not anymore popular.

The study, conducted by Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s leading developers of secure content and threat management solutions, was carried out in partnership with B2B International in July 2012. It aims to find out the opinions of IT professionals in medium-sized to large enterprises regarding corporate security solutions, determine their level of knowledge of current threats, and look at how they evaluate risks.

Kaspersky surveyed more than 3,300 senior IT professionals from 22 countries. All respondents had an influence on IT security policy, and a good knowledge of both IT security issues and general business matters (finance, HR, etc.).

The results also covered measures which are directly related to infrastructure security and data safety. For example, 50% of companies have restricted or prohibited the use of file exchange services, and 47 percent have enforced similar rules for connecting external devices to work computers.

More worrying, though, 43 percent of IT specialists have already faced deliberate or accidental data leakage due to employee actions. This significant figure suggests there is insufficient control in terms of storing and communicating corporate information.

Of this figure, 42 percent of the respondents said that cybercrime will become a bigger concern in the next two years. This is more than likely to happen considering the increasing number of malicious programs and the emergence of new types of attack.

Half as many of the professionals surveyed believed there would be an increase in other IT risks: intellectual property theft and industrial espionage scored 19 percent each, while those foreseeing future risks coming from computer fraud amounted to 16 percent of the respondents.

Among the other IT security risks cited were intellectual property theft (31 percent), computer fraud (26 percent) and industrial espionage (24 percent).

The study also said that it’s important to remember that any ban or restrictions should be applied beyond workstations within the corporate network and cover other computers such as corporate laptops which can be connected to publicWi-Fi networks.

In the report, corporate security policies are ineffective and dedicated software is needed. Such solutions are available as part of Kaspersky Endpoint Security 8 for Windows. Its Web Control module allows system administrators to block or restrict access to certain websites, social services and online games.

These can be blocked automatically, or according to manually specified criteria or blacklists. WebControl makes it possible to introduce separate security policies for different user groups as well as flexibly restrict access to certain resources during work and non-work time.

Jimmy Fong, Channel Sales Director for Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia, said that the survey is an indication of the direction towards IT security among medium-to-large corporations in a global scale.

“The surprising figures have changed little over the previous year’s survey, which indicates that there is still a lot of work to do in informing corporations about up and coming threats, the damage these threats will create on companies’ network and data, as well as the policies needed to be placed to ensure security.”

“Any company in the Philippines has to be absolutely prepared to face these security issues if they are serious in pursuing their business goals,” said Fong. (FREEMAN)