It's a Catch-22 for many companies and IT departments: Allow access to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and the company is opened up to malicious content, phishing schemes and account hijackings. Block all social media sites, and the business risks losing young talent to competitors or will challenge employees to find workarounds. Which can be equally dangerous.
But because IT execs don't own these social networking sites and thus have no influence in enforcing strong passwords and vulnerability management, the key to achieving a safe compromise, a new Forrester Research report says, is focusing on what IT execs can influence: a corporate acceptable use policy. Of course, companies have to consider whether such policies extend to remote groups outside the corporate network-such as remote workers and contractors-and if so, under what conditions these policies would be in effect.
