Social Networking Weakens Enterprise Security

A new study finds that the use of social networking in the workplace has risen from 19% in 2008 to 24% in 2010, with the biggest surges coming in Germany and Britain.

That finding comes from a Trend Micro survey of 1,600 people who regularly use the Internet at work, drawn equally from Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Using social networking tools at work isn't the only quasi-personal-time activity on the rise. Comparing the 2010 survey results with a similar Trend Micro survey conducted in 2008, workers in the United States are now 66% more likely to write personal e-mails at work, 39% more likely to conduct personal banking or online bill-paying, and 29% more likely to watch or listen to streaming audio or video.

But in a good turn for information security, the study also found that from 2008 to 2010, workers in all countries but Japan were also much less likely to download executable files onto their business PC.

http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=225800064&section=news