Security still a concern with collaboration tools survey finds

Organisations are tightening access to external collaboration technologies in a bid to better manage their exposure to malicious attacks and information leaks. The collaboration and security survey conducted by Integ at the recent AusCERT 2009 conference showed that 76% of respondents agree that allowing access to an external social networking application increased the companies’ exposure to threats and 64% blocked access to some or all sites.

Significantly, 79% of the organisations surveyed provide internal collaboration tools for employees such as instant messaging, blogging or designated knowledge sharing tools.

Nearly half (49%) of the organisations surveyed provided employees with an internal instant messaging tool, 50% provided collaboration tools such as Microsoft Sharepoint and 28% offered an internal blogging platform.

According to Ian Poole, CEO of Integ, businesses increasingly understand the value of employees using social tools to share information. However, due to the risks associated with social networking sites, the majority are keen to keep these social tools within the company’s network.

“Employee behaviour is definitely driving the adoption of social software applications within businesses. With ‘digital natives’ entering the work force who are accustomed to the messaging capabilities found in sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Skype, organisations are looking towards social software to find greater ways for their employees to communicate and share information with each other. However, the results show that due to the security risks associated with these sites, organisations are keen to keep the elements of these tools that have business use in their internal environments.”

The survey also showed that organisations tend to block social tools depending on its core use, whether it is for social, business or what was considered ‘essential’ use.

Skype was blocked by 41% of respondents and social sites Facebook and Hotmail were blocked by 38 and 36% of respondents respectively. Linked In was only blocked by 17% of businesses, hosted audio conferencing sites were blocked by 13% and just 9% of companies blocked the use of internet banking.

“The results also provide an interesting insight into the IT security policies of organisations. Although sites such as Facebook and Hotmail tend to be blocked due to a perceived higher security risk, sites such as Linked In which have similar security in place are generally more accepted because they are seen as being more aligned with business activity.”

According to Poole, it is also common for companies to adopt more relaxed policies on text communication compared to voice communications. This is primarily due to the fact that text communication is easier to log and track than voice communication, particularly in a situation where internal information has been made public.