The Human Capitalist » Blocking Facebook

Blocking Facebook

50% of employees are being block from accessing Facebook at work, according to a new survey by Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control.

The two primary reasons for blocking Facebook…

1) “…a large number of Facebook profile pages contain users’ current employment details, which could be used together with other stolen information by cybercriminals bent on committing corporate fraud, or to infiltrate company networks.” and 2) Fear of lost productivity…or better described as Facebook being a “procrastinator’s paradise”.

Keep in mind, Sophos has a vested interest in the results as “[their] WS1000 appliance defends firms against web threats, and allows IT departments to block access to unapproved sites. and has a vested interest in blocking sites. ” Nonetheless, these are very interesting results that I would tend to agree based on some recent experiences. A few weeks ago, I tried to log onto Facebook from a Fortune 100 clients site with no success — it was blocked.

What’s will change? Today, 8% of companies polled did not block access to Facebook fearing employee backlash. This number will inevitably increase as the younger demographic, already dependent on Facebook and their mobile phone, continue to invade the workforce.

As companies continue to put blogging policies in place, I think we will increasingly see “Facebook policies”. University administrators and athletic departments, in particular, are putting more rigor around what their athletes post on Facebook.

As Stuart Scott from ESPN would say, “you can’t stop Facebook, you can only hope to contain it”.

Technorati Tags: social networking, Facebook, Sophos

August 22nd, 2007

3 Comments Add your own

1. jeff nolan | August 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm

As is often the case with new things in the enterprise, the first instinct is to kill something not easily understood. It was the same with instant messaging and way back in time when companies viewed the internet itself as largely unproductive.

This current episode, like the previous ones, will turn around in time.
2. Matt Chapman | August 23rd, 2007 at 7:56 am

I always find it interesting that the companies who block access to personal sites are quite often the same companies who expect you to answer and respond to calls and emails outside of work hours.
3. Collab@work » Blog &hellip | September 10th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

[…] anecdotal comments are that is is very low. Jason Corsello (again) discussed a few days ago how companies are blocking access to Facebook. So, apart of the marketing spin, what’s the point of “social networking tool […]