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Posts tagged social networking
How to Protect Your Social Network Identity
Feb 17th
Over a billion people visited social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter last month so it’s not surprising that hackers have these sites in their cross-hairs.
The attacks come in many forms: spreading Trojan viruses including key loggers, phishing for passwords and sniffing out packets of sensitive information.
In fact, according to recent research from Breach Security Labs, social networks were the most targeted category in 2009, accounting for 19% of all malicious attacks last year.
The media reports evidence of these attacks seemingly every day.
More >10 security threats to watch out for in 2009
Apr 22nd
We’re well into the new year now, and we’re beginning to see trends emerging on the security front. Some of the threats we’ll see this year will be similar to those in years past (after all, many of the basic con games now being perpetuated online were around long before the advent of computers and the Internet). However, attackers are becoming much more sophisticated in their methods to circumvent the increased levels of security built into operating systems and applications. Here are 10 security threats that are likely to become more prominent in 2009.
1: Social networking as an avenue of attack
Social networking has experienced a boom in popularity over the last few years. It’s now finding its way from the home into the workplace and up the generational ladder from the young folks into the mainstream. It’s a great way to stay in touch in a mobile society, and it can be a good tool for making business contacts and disseminating information to groups. However, popular social networking sites have been the target of attacks and scammers. Many people let their hair down when posting on these sites and share much more personal data (and even company data) than they should.
Think you’ll solve the problem just by blocking social networking sites on your company network? Not so fast. As Steve Riley pointed out in his recent talk on attack progressions at the 2009 MVP Summit, today’s young professionals are growing up with social networking, and they expect to have it available to them at work just as older employees expect to be able to use their office telephones for reasonable, limited personal calls. In addition, you lose the business benefits of social networking if you shut it down completely. After all, companies didn’t shut down e-mail because it could present a security threat. A better approach is to educate your workers about social networking practices and develop policies governing social media use. As an example, take a look at Intel’s Social Media Guidelines.
