Archive for August, 2008
The Gold medal for IM faux pas goes to…
Posted by actiance in Employee Behavior, Enterprise IM, New Internet, Public IM, Social Networking, Web 2.0 on August 25, 2008
I’m admittedly not an “early adopter,” and I’m typically not the latest to jump on a new technology trend (and yes I still have problems organising my DVD recorder), but heading up FaceTime’s EMEA marketing group has meant I’ve needed to get with the program. Along the way, I’ve made my share of social networking faux pas, so I came with a plan to see how many more luddites there were trying to make their way in the social networking world… and how many had made the same mistakes as me.
So, with this in mind, we launched a (completely anonymous) survey and I sent out invitations via good ole email, and even via my Facebook and LinkedIn buddies … oh boy. I have to say it was interesting reading (and I almost wish it hadn’t been anonymous now!).
We immediately received stories from users who showed an almost Olympian prowess at doing the wrong thing. Computer Weekly reported on some of the results of the survey.
Here’s a recap: More than a third of the 77% of respondents that can access IM services at work admitted to sending an instant message to the wrong person, occasionally to the very person they were talking about and frequently to their superiors. Sending kisses, checking on the whereabouts of loved ones and derogatory comments about co-workers and superiors have all ended up in a manager’s chat window. One respondent even confessed to sending a joke of an explicit sexual nature accidentally to the Financial Director.
A lack of forward thinking (I put myself at the head of the list!) when posting new and updates generally was evident in faux-pas anecdotes given during the course of the survey.
One respondent posted to Twitter “Woohoo! I’ve finished for the day” at 4pm rather than his finish time of 5:30 pm, only to receive a call from a colleague asking how he was enjoying the sunshine. Another stated that he was an eager job seeker to his current, and rather surprised, employer.
Just 5% of respondents had sent confidential information to the wrong person. However, one such error resulted in the company’s telephony and internet access being used by someone else at the organisation’s expense.
Nearly 16% of respondents said that they had clicked on an attachment or a link within an IM that had turned out to be malware. 42% of those said their anti-virus protection did not catch it.
Nearly three quarters of people surveyed could access social networking sites at work, but only two thirds said that their employer’s policy allowed them, showing that adequate policy enforcement tools were not in place. The most popular sites by far that people used were LinkedIn and Facebook, with 33.1% of respondents saying they had the most friends on LinkedIn, compared with 32% that said real life friends topped their list.
The bottom line is, people are engaging in communications via IM and social networking at work. Enabling IM and Web 2.0 communications can bring great benefits to companies, but IT departments need to consider the risks involved and make sure that security, policy control and compliance are introduced as standard best practice.
Perhaps the best advice for users is summed up by one of the survey respondents who said “I always check twice, to see if I’ve been naughty or nice.”
Automated Twitter spam on the way?
Posted by actiance in Employee Behavior, Malware, Social Networking, Web Security on August 11, 2008
Our research director, Chris Boyd, has posted an interesting description of a new micro-blogging spam discovery. What does this have to do with businesses, you ask?
Two things: Twitter has the potential to be a business tool, and employees are bringing it into the enterprise anyway.
Companies like Zappos are on the leading edge of using Twitter for business. They’re encouraging employees to Twitter, and using it for customer service and tracking it for branding information. So many indispensable business tools crept into the enterprise the same way (email, IM, file sharing, and even Web surfing).
Plus, chances are your employees are using Twitter at the office somehow: on the Web, texting from a company cell phone, or through the dozens of apps that connect with the service. Those dozens of apps bring us back to Chris Boyd’s discovery. He discovered a new tool to produce automated spam micro-blogging messages. It’s not hitting Twitter itself yet, but similar sites that are popular abroad. The spammer hooks a micro-blogging account up to a MSN instant messaging client, and then infects their IM client with a bot to spew messages. It could be used to spread malware or adware links.
Just as with IM, Twitter messages are so immediate and informal that people are more likely to click a link without thinking. We’re all trained to avoid spam email, but it’s harder to tell if a brief message is legitimate.
For now, this discovery hasn’t hit Twitter because the integration is complicated, but watch this space…and tell your employees not to click on just any hyperlink.
Unified Communications in real life
Posted by actiance in Compliance, Employee Behavior, Enterprise IM, Public IM, Unified Communications on August 7, 2008
Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
I recently
did a podcast interview with Michael Osterman of Osterman Research for
Messaging News.
Here at
FaceTime, we’re immersed in unified communications every day. We talk to our
customers about what they hope to get out of UC, what modalities (messaging,
VoIP, Web Conferencing, etc.) they are deploying first, and how they are
struggling with internal issues regarding architectural considerations,
alignment with business processes, IT ownership and more. Sometimes I get too
close to these issues, so it’s nice to step back and think about how to answer
questions like the ones Michael presented in a way that provides a broader
market perspective.
I hope I
did that in this podcast and I hope you have time to listen to it. For those of
you with time constraints, here are some of the points we talked about:
- UC is entering the workplace in
much the same way as the original PCs, or more recently, wireless access
points. Users are downloading consumer-oriented UC-like applications like
Skype, and reaping collaboration benefits. - Most organizations aren’t
deploying UC with multiple modalities all at once. They are starting with
presence and IM and extending to Web Conferencing and VoIP – putting
policies in place that can be extending across future modalities once they
are deployed. - Productivity through
collaboration is typically the #1 driver for deploying UC, but cost
savings and employee attraction and retention are close seconds. - More avenues are available to
bring information into the organization and more options for employees to
communicate outside the company. This means that security and compliance
are top concerns when deploying UC. - IT wants effective management
and control of all these communications options, but the bottom line is
that forward thinking IT professionals want to add value – they are
motivated by enabling employees to be productive and contribute to the
success of the company. - When an organization rolls out
UC they often find it exists in a heterogeneous environment that includes
“rogue” consumer applications that do not go away. It’s not
uncommon to have 8-15 rogue applications (IM clients, file sharing tools,
social networks etc.) running on the enterprise network. They may not all
be bad, but they’re not visible and not sanctioned.
Bottom
line, management is looking for two things: strong ROI from its UC platform and
a way to control the universe of consumer-oriented applications that employees
bring onto the network. We see a range of company policies – lots of companies
are experimenting and don’t want to shut things down if it can provide a
competitive advantage through better employee collaboration. Others are in an
industry with stricter requirements and need to block or closely manage certain
apps.
I’d love to
hear how your company is dealing with unified communications, both the consumer
and enterprise versions. Does the above ring true for you?
