Playing Facebook games at work: A Security threat

In the third week of July, 2010, Cisco's "2010 Midyear Security Report" revealed that, a huge number of Facebook users love to play games at work.

It has been noted by the security firm that, currently it may not be risky to play games at work, still it should be considered that gradually the cybercriminals are inventing methods to spread malware through these popular games.

The reason behind this is, heavy users exploring the internet for cheats and tricks to have a better game, and hence get targeted by the malware-infected links and spams, which provides these shortcuts.

It has been detected by the firm that globally 7% of Facebook users spend 68 minutes per day on an average, playing games like "Farmvilee". The next most popular game is "Mafia Wars", having 5% of users adding up to 52% minutes per day. Next on the line is "Café' World", with 4% of users spending almost 36 minutes daily.

Beside this, the other maximum enjoyed Facebook games are like, Treasure Isle with 36%, Zoo World with 18%, Mind Jolt games with 13%, Country Life with 11%, Restaurant City with 11%, Fish Life with 0% and lastly Petville with 10%.

Cisco's report confirming these data that malware agents are taking the help of social media to distribute malware is actually certified by the report's findings which reveals that in different companies, 50% of end users agreed ignoring company laws blocking the use of social networking at the least once in a week, and 27% revealed changing the corporate devises settings to get entry to the blocked applications, for playing such online games.

The report finds that if the companies react to the risk of these online games (played by the users at work) by blocking all entry to the social networking websites, they might harm the users' supporting and communicating skill in an ever growing business atmosphere.

Hence it has been advised by Cisco that companies should balance the requirement to grant access to users with the requirement to manage business security. The best answer is to develop explicit laws governing the use of particular features, like games, in social networking answers, as noticed by the firm.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/6/2010