Social Networks Are The Reason Of 91% Of All Corporate Data Leaks

Worldwide popularity of social networks is growing and more and more can't resist the pleasure of surfing through the pages of their friends. And if earlier the main auditory of the social networks was mostly youth, now it is a platform for communications between people of any age and social status. But social networks are the places, where literary tonnes of your personal data is in public access. Sometimes, even important and classified information can be shared there through negligence. Once, US navy conducted a secret government data leak, by posting their photos in Facebook.

Anyway, latest statistics tell us that more and more people are using those networks at work. Most of those people even spend major part of their working hours chatting in Facebook, or reading new tweets. Such a tendency is dangerous not only because it decreases the productivity of labor, but hackers and other cyber criminals can use the data shared there to get access to corporate networks and steal expensive data. Social networks are dangerous, they gather your personal information, track your location and log all your correspondence.

But what to do about it? First option is to simply block access to them. Many companies do so simply because they can't keep an eye on every employee. Second option is a control. That option is frequently used by companies that actually work with social networks. And in the second case, the problem of data leaks is really important. Here they use various traffic analyzers, check all the chats in Skype and other messengers. But what are the reasons to block access to social netwokrs?

Reason 1. Social sites. They simply created to share confident information. The problem here lies in the fact that employees simply don't know what information must not be shared. For those people the only solution is simple social networks blocking.

Reason 2. Social network gives people the time to relax and have fun during their working hours. But that is the problem of motivation. Just block social networks and they will use messengers or emails for chatting.

Reason 3. Social sites are the sources of malicious software, keyloggers, trojans and other malware. Most of Android malware is shared with social networks. But such networks as Facebook or Twitter are not the only place to catch a virus. Employee may get it via email or just while surfing the web.

The question remains: is it ok to block those networks at work and will that improve information security? The answer is rather complicated, but we at Jammer-Store think that is better to block them. But it is hard to do that technically. First of all if you'll block access with software methods, employees will probably use TOR or other anonymity services to get there. Also, a smartphone with mobile Internet access is not a miracle these days, most of your employees probably have those.

So the most suitable solution in most cases is blocking access with software and blocking mobile internet with Wi-Fi networks, that's why many companies install combined 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi signal blockers at their offices. But it is really important to make employees understand why you do so.

Those networks, such as Facebook can compromise not only employees, but the whole company as it is. People of then discuss their work with people on Facebook or Linkedin, and that information becomes a source of money for the competitors of the company. Also, everything you post on the web, stays on the web forever, that's why it is important to think well before posting.