50% SMBs Block Employee Access To Social Networks; Finds Webroot

A recent study that Webroot an Internet security company commissioned reveals that SMBs have raised their vigilance so far as their working staff's utilization of websites for social networking is concerned. The survey, which questioned over 1,000 SMBs from U.K and USA, found that many such businesses disabled access to websites for social networking or else prohibited their access.

States the report, worry remains high insofar as attacks through social networks are concerned. Up to 500 employees discovered that 53% of respondents felt it was mainly the threat of malware that prompted them to disable workers' access to Twitter and Facebook the social-networking websites. Conversely, 42% reported they were very worried regarding data leakage via the said websites. 50% of respondents stated a worm/virus had sometime or another victimized them, whereas 4 out of 10 respondents stated they encountered some form of phishing attack during 2010.

Clearly IT administrators were hit insofar as tackling the effect of social-networking websites after being used like a threat medium was concerned, said CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck of Webroot. EWeek reported this on November 16, 2010.

According to Eschelbeck, 1 out of 6 persons who were surveyed stated that an attack or infection flowed through Web 2.0 software or a social network, while around 50% of businesses stated that spyware had infected their networks during 2010.

He added that every business required framing a policy regarding the use of social-networking websites as also installing trustworthy Web-security systems to continuously safeguard from 0-day threats.

Indeed, according to the report, 39% of SMBs are equipped with a policy for Internet usage which particularly bars employees from going to 'Facebook,' whereas 30% have disabled access to 'Twitter' as also 27% bar access to YouTube and other video-sharing websites. 21% of SMBs permit workers to go to social-networking websites during say after office time, lunch break etc., while 16% allow specific departments like marketing to go to certain fixed social-networking websites.

The report also states that 47% of SMBs were worried regarding leakage of business data across social networks, with 12% reporting such incidents on one social-networking website because of employee surfing.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 12/7/2010