Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 23) In May, the LinkedIn business networking system was used by scammers seeking to swindle money from unwary corporate executives. On this occasion, the spammers offered a share of a non-existent U.S. $6.5 million inheritance fund, further highlighting the need for users to be vigilant to unsolicited approaches online. Sophos experts are quick to note that the level of Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn spam is still dwarfed by email spam, but there is a growing trend for spammers to use other techniques to spread their messages. leaked.” Filippi goes on to say that in these environments, which promote the exchange of ideas and information for education and problemsolving, there is a difficult balance or line where too much information is shared. “Similar to email, organizations see a clear need for technology to monitor and control information flow, and as importantly, to educate and train individuals on best practices and policies. Increasingly, organizations are investing in technologies that both provide that level of security and control to prevent such information from leaving the blogging opens a Pandora’s Box,” he states. “When an employee utilizes a blogging site, often they disclose content that is a stream of consciousness without regard to what can be misconstrued, what is illegal, inappropriate, and so forth. With the fact that blogging potentially is exposed to a wider audience than most other forums, it dramatically increases the risk exposure versus other forums for data loss or leakage that violates security and privacy policies of the organization. Graydon notes that until we have some legal guidance on the issues surrounding an em- etworking, ng, and Web Threats by Stephanie Jordan Blogging Social networking is not the only popular way to share ones information with the online world. Along with the Web came the advent of the Weblog, where anyone can become a published writer and analyst. A now commonplace practice, what threats do blogs present? Nicholas Filippi, product manager for Sendmail, responds, “Social networking and blogging sites are becoming real security concerns for some businesses. Employees of some large organizations might participate in literally dozens of blogs and are posting information everyday. Anytime you introduce another medium for the free-flow exchange of information, there is the potential for confidential information to be accidentally network, as well as train end-users for how that information should be handled.” To address this for its customers, Sendmail’s Sentrion MP not only allows organizations to take actions like encrypt, add disclaimers, quarantine and more based on the content and context of a message, but also supports the ability to send notifications to the sender, manager, or security admin to ensure the correct training is understood. Graydon has observed that the question of blogging as a threat is raising itself in many levels of IT administration and with business owners as well. “There is always a threat of disinformation, Intellectual Property disclosure, acceptable use, compliance violations and so forth, but ployee (or ex-employee) discussing information on a blog, this question is difficult to answer. “The simplistic view would be to say ‘Yes’, blogging is a real threat to information leakage, but so are many other areas with Web messaging, such as social networks, wikis and other Web 2.0 channels.” Content Control With so many messaging options today data leakage seems inevitable. “The emergence of different types of communications media on the network has definitely increased the potential of data leaks, but possibly for different reasons,” suggests Graydon. “Monitoring content across the different media is not that difficult, but being consistent in the messagingnews.com 23 http://www.messagingnews.com
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