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May 19, 2008
Facebook: Too Good for You, But HR Gets a Pass
Vangie did a writeup of Facebook Chat for Instant Messaging Planet, including some bits about how FaceTime, a security company that works what it refers to as the “greynet” niche, is providing corporate IT more control over how employees access Facebook:
“In response to rapidly growing concern over the use of social network sites and Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise, FaceTime’s Unified Security Gateway is now designed to provide IT managers with management, security and control over 140 social networking sites, 20,000 individual Facebook widgets and more than 400 Web and real-time applications. These new features are in addition to the USG’s already existing URL filtering, anti-malware and IM and P2P management capabilities.
“‘As we’re learning from our customers, blocking social networking applications like Facebook is simply not an option any more. Companies have difficulty recruiting top-notch talent if they don’t allow many of the cutting-edge applications and tools the recruits are accustomed to using.’
“He said that some of FaceTime’s own customers have HR departments that access Facebook as a recruitment and research tool. ‘They originally shut down the application, but eventually were forced to open access and now needed security. These days, it’s become nearly impossible to shut out all greynet applications. Another customer actually has a written contract with their own customer for the right to communicate via instant messaging. In the new world of enterprise 2.0, Facebook just can’t be shut out.’”
I took a briefing from FaceTime several weeks ago. Its security tool goes beyond turning access to Facebook on or off. It can also selectively block specific Facebook applications, and base those blocks on the same group policy it’s able to apply to general access to Web sites. The group policy approach allows an admin to grant access to a given app or site to everyone in a specific department or group while denying it to others.
Consequently, while you’re stuck trying to get some entertainment value out of the corporate intranet’s portal page or the boss’s official blog, the HR people are yucking it up over a picture of some job candidate (or you) barfing all over a lampshade.
Posted by mhall at 8:06 PM | Add Comment
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