Mediaboss Marketing

In this article, Ronan Kavanagh, CEO, SpamTitan, discusses critical security aspects related the use of social media in work places and beyond.

1. Ensuring social networking activity in the workplace is responsible and productive will become even more of a crucial issue.

How many survey results or headlines have you noticed in 2012 about our growing addiction to social networking, some people can't stop friending, poking, tagging and posting. Psychologists tell us as human beings we crave connection hence the extent of our addiction, social networking taps into a basic human need. We predict that social networking will become even more ingrained in our everyday lives in 2013, the challenge for business is how to manage this behaviour in the workplace.

Most business managers know a significant number of employees are messaging on Facebook, shopping on Amazon or watching YouTube videos and theyre not sure what do about it. Social media risk and subsequent web and network security issues will continue to be a serious concern for businesses in 2013 hence we predict a greater adoption of web protection products in the SMB sector as small and medium sized businesses start managing the risks using appropriate technologies.

2. The bring your own device (BYOD) trend will continue into 2013

The BYOD trend will continue to grow as similar consumer-driven IT initiatives become more widely accepted. The dilemma facing businesses as to how best support these devices will persist in 2013, the main issue being costs and security. We predict that many CTOs having reviewed their organisations experience with BYOD will decide that its not worth the pain and will look to enterprise and cloud based tools as a better alternative.

We will continue to see severe shortcomings in corporate security policies in relation to supporting devices. Regardless of who owns the device, employees must abide by corporate security policies if they are using the device for business however this requires a policy to be in place which will be a priority for many organisations in 2013. CTOs and IT departments have a lot to consider.

3. Cybercriminals will continue to get better at profiling social media users

With social networking and social commerce continuing to grow so is the level of malware attacks on social networks, these attacks aim to steal payment credentials as well as personal details. The black market value of these credentials is growing as cybercriminals buy and sell this information. Cybercriminals will continue to get better at profiling social media users so that they can monetize this information by gaining access to bank and other accounts.

Spam is still a problem, however we have seen significant changes over the past 2 to 3 years with spam email volumes falling over that period, spam now accounts for about 70% of global email volume, down from approximately 90%. 2012 has seen an increase in awareness amongst users about phishing and social engineering attacks across both email and social networks. Despite this social media will again be the platform of choice for phishing attacks in 2013.

Link:
Infosecurity Europe: Some previsions for 2013 for the social media platforms