Workers embrace social networking, fall prey to to cybercrims

Anthony Caruana
Thursday, 09 December 2010 19:03

Business IT - Security

A national Newspoll survey commissioned by Symantec has found almost three-quarters of Australian workers are accessing social networking sites even though almost half have been the victims of cybercrime including phishing, identity theft and receiving a computer virus through these sites.

48 percent of workers who participated in the online survey of more than 800 Australian workers found that say their workplace does not officially allow them to look at social networking sites during work hours. Nearly one in four Australian workers access social networks during work hours - just under a third of these do so without approval from their employers.

Symantec's SMB Director for the Pacific region, Steve Martin says that 'It is becoming more common for employees to access social networking sites during work hours yet some businesses are reluctant to allow staff to access these sites because of concerns around staff productivity and security. Not allowing staff to access social networking sites is not a bulletproof solution to preventing security threats entering an organisation'.

Employees can still access social networking sites from their own personal devices and may be enticed by spammers to disclose confidential information about themselves, the company, or its customers. Instead businesses should look to enable staff to safely access social networking sites at work.

'Symantec encourages businesses to embrace social networking and work with employees to reduce the threats on social networking sites through a combination of staff education, strong usage policies and robust technology which blocks security threats coming into the business and prevents the flow of sensitive information onto social networking sites,' said Martin.

Some of the survey's key findings are on the next page.