Should your company fear social networks?

ReadWriteWeb reports this week on a recent study by security software vendor, Sophos [1], that found approximately two-thirds of businesses surveyed were afraid that employees participating in social networks could endanger their security. Before you read too much into it, keep in mind this was a survey sponsored by a security software company, so of course it makes sense that results point toward a perceived security risk.

The odd part of the survey to me was that 63 percent of companies in the survey worried about employees sharing too much personal information on social networks. That's like a company worrying about its employees sharing too much personal information with their neighbors or at a party. It's the employee's business what they share about themselves online and doesn't really concern the company. I could see them being worried about sharing company information, as 66 percent did,  but personal information? That doesn't really add up.

According to the ReadWriteWeb article: "A quarter of these businesses also report that they have been the victim of spam, phishing, and malware attacks via sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace."

This may be true, but companies still need to be thinking about social networks because their customers are there talking about them in positive and negative ways. Smart companies are monitoring the conversation and participating. If you ignore social networks because of security fears, you might find that, in the process, you are losing a valuable competitive advantage that social networks could give you.

For more information:
- read the ReadWriteWeb post [2]

Related Articles:
Can a trusted social network become a personal taxonomy? [3]
Security pros get comfortable with social networking [4]
Survey: Developers head to social networks [5]
Gartner says half of social networking projects will fail [6]