by Krishna De on 04/18/2010 05:26 2 comments , 5469 views
http://ow.ly/1AcEs
Do you allow your employees to access social networking sites at work?
I meet PR professionals and marketing managers each week who can not access Facebook from their work computer as it has been blocked. I also see that in some organisations there is an area often near the reception or staff restaurant where certain PC’s have been allowed access to social networking sites.
Yet other organisations I meet allow all of their staff to access social networking sites from their work computer as they are confident in their firewall and they have clear codes of conduct, social media policies and a culture that is about their staff delivering against their goals so that it’s the outcome that matters. I am not advocating one approach over another – it does depend on the culture and readiness of the organisation. In my experiecne however there is often no connection between the IT department, the HR department and the Marketing and Sales Departments in terms of a rigourous and healthy debate about what is relevant for the organisation and their people.
This week some research was published by Network Box a managed securites company who researched 250 IT managers (it’s unclear about the geography or sector they were from) about their biggest security concerns in the year ahead. The top answer was “employees using applications on social networks” while at work, with 43 per cent of respondents saying this is a major concern.
In a separate question, 36 per cent of respondents commented that they are concerned about malware passed via networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter, and employees trusting (and clicking on) links sent by contacts within their networks. The research also notes that more business internet traffic goes to Facebook than to any other Internet site – the analysis of 13 billion URL’s used by businesses in the first quarter of 2010 indicated that 6.8 per cent of all business internet traffic goes to Facebook – an increase of one per cent since the last quarter of 2009.
The research also indicated that 10 per cent of all corporate bandwidth is taken up watching YouTube videos, an increase of two per cent since the last quarter of 2009.
The top five websites visited by businesses in Q1 2010 were:
1. Facebook – 6.8 per cent of all traffic
2. Google – 3.4 per cent of all traffic
3. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.8 per cent of all traffic
4. Yahoo! – 2.4 per cent of all traffic
5. Doubleclick – 1.7 per cent of all traffic.
The top five websites using the most bandwith in Q1 2010 were:
1. YouTube – 10 per cent of all bandwidth used
2. Facebook – 4.5 per cent of all bandwidth used
3. Windows Update – 3.3 per cent of all bandwidth used
4. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.7 per cent of all bandwidth used
5. Google – 2.5 per cent of all bandwidth used.
It’s great to have the statistics, but then what? Will this data be quoted by business managers saying there is a need to restrict access to the Internet from the PC’s in the office? Is that like saying you have to go through the office switchboard to make a phone call? Won’t staff just find other ways of searching the Internet such as through their mobile phone?
And by restricting access are we restricting innovation?
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