Q I'm concerned about the increasing use of social networking sites being used in the workplace?

A We have seen an explosion in the number and the adoption of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space etc. In fact many businesses are now turning to these social networking sites as a way to promote their services with many people even posting corporate video
clips on YouTube.

While there are many advantages of using these social networking sites, there are also disadvantages. Your employee productivity will be impacted by inappropriate and misuse of such sites,not forgetting the IT Security risks these attract from hackers.

Only this month Facebook has been clearing up its site after 200million members were subjected to a phishing attack (obtain passwords through deception). So, would this have put your business at risk if someone in the workplace was using Facebook? The answer is YES!

Then you have the internet bandwidth issue. Your internet "pipe" can only download so much data at a time therefore if your employees are browsing the web for non-work related activities this could impact on the speed of the connection for those who are using it for work related purposes. If you are completing contracts and you have a deadline to meet, you could end up missing it and losing the opportunity for future business.

Therefore adopting this form of networking as part of your business strategy could worsen the position for you!

So how do you manage this? Well you can start by reminding employees about the company's policy on email and internet use. Then you can implement a web content filtering solution; either device based or hosted externally. There are pro's and con's for each but both are more than affordable for small to medium sized businesses.

Whichever is your preferred solution, web rules for users and groups can be configured and the level of control can be determined by the type of content and specific time periods. You can also get reports on activity.

In fact Google, the world's highest searched term has entered web security which just shows you how serious the Number 1 Company takes this issue!