Business wants to close Facebook
January 23rd, 2008 by Thomas
Chief information security officers (CISOs) are strongly against company employees using social networking sites and would prefer them banned, a new report has revealed. Research by Global Secure Systems (GSS) found that UK businesses lost £6.5 billion in productivity last year because of workers using sites like Facebook. In a recent meeting held by Infosecurity Europe 2008 with 20 CISOs, the executives estimated they were losing between 15 and 20 per cent of bandwidth to social networking sites. GSS reviewed its own traffic problems and was forced to act. The company avoided having to upgrade its bandwidth and saved itself thousands of pounds. David Hobson, managing director, explained that “after locking down this traffic and just allowing staff to view these sites during their lunch hour or after work, we found we didn’t actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all”. GSS have advised applying a “reasonable use policy” rather than an outright ban. Companies can implement this by using in-built filters that deny access to certain sites. Advertising sponsored communication within networks has been called ‘Word-of-Mice’ marketing and has yet to prove its full value to marketers.
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