Posts tagged Ways
3 Ways Social Media Can Put Enterprises at Risk
Jan 30th
While the basic risks of social media are well known to most enterprise security managers, there are many dark corners of social media that can be just as dangerous or even more so. Here are three ways that social media can sneak malware and exploits across your corporate firewalls, and ways that you can pay attention and hopefully prevent their misuse. The biggest issue is that many corporate executives don’t really know what is going on across their networks, and don’t have any visibility into the traffic patterns and potential exploits.
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HTTPS isn’t necessarily as secure as you think.
SSL/TLS encryption is overwhelmingly the most common encryption protocol used in modern Web applications – from social media sites (like Twitter or Facebook), webmail (like Gmail) or cloud sync services (like Dropbox). And while for the most part, this protocol does a good job of protecting user privacy.
However, if you’re already on a company network or connected via a VPN, then these encrypted connections may also be putting you (and your company) at increased risk. The main reason for this is that the encrypted tunnel between you and the server hides the network traffic, but doesn’t protect you from threats on the site that you are already connected to. So even if hackers can’t view the web traffic that you are sending to a social network’s servers, they are still able to attack you with clickjacking and other exploits commonly employed in social network attacks on the site itself.
For IT, the bottom line is that if you can’t see encrypted traffic, you can’t fully protect your users online. Fortunately, network security companies know this and I predict that in the future there will be two kinds of security companies: those that can decrypt SSL traffic and those that will be adding this crucial feature.
Mobile Devices May Be the Weakest Link
A few years ago, even a rumored piece of mobile malware in the wild could grab global headlines. But 2011 was the year that mobile malware went from “proof of concept” to “real threat” – and 2012 will likely only be worse, with malvertising and botnets on mobile devices predicted to increase.
René Bonvanie is the Chief Marketing Officer at Palo Alto Networks, the network security company.
But the biggest threat may come from mobile applications themselves, few of which protect login credentials adequately. From a security perspective, a compromised mobile application is not “less bad” than a compromised desktop client or a compromised network. If your username and password for a Web application is compromised on your mobile device, perpetrators can use your accounts for illicit purposes. This includes the accounts you use at work. Also, remember that if your mobile device is logged on to the company Wi-Fi network, then all the applications on that device are also operating on the enterprise network. Even without a formal bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, anyone in the company with a copy of a network Wi-Fi password can potentially put their personal device on your network.
Suspicious Browser Extensions and Third-Party Apps
Everything that was said about mobile applications applies doubly to third-party applications, browser plug-ins and scripts for sites such as Facebook, Google+ and other platforms that integrate with trusted Web applications. Everything that we said before about how to secure yourself from Web application threats – gaining more visibility into your network traffic, making sure your security can identify malicious activity even when it’s encrypted, and establishing best practices for end users to follow – also applies to browser extensions and third-party applications.
The Best Defense?
As we’ve seen, there are many different and varied threats that put both the enterprise and individual employees at risk. While there is not a single silver bullet that can eliminate all threats to the enterprise, educating users and implementing IT best practices can greatly mitigate them. It’s also important to note that allowing these social web applications on the network is still beneficial for the enterprise as a whole, providing benefits from increased productivity and improved collaboration to higher overall employee morale. IT should engage with users so that they can keep up with the pace of change and security needs of their employees who are on the social web.
Discuss
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8 Quick Ways to Increase Your AdWords CTR
Jan 30th
There are times you just want to increase your click-through rates. You might need to raise it to help Quality Scores, increase traffic, or gain visibility for a new product. Often by just raising click-through rates, you might not be raising your conversion rate. You can even decrease your…
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5 Simple Ways to Explore Your Social Media Following
Jan 26th
The larger your social media following, the greater your potential reach online. It’s this statement that leads so many businesses to work to increase the number of fans and followers they have. Having a large social media following is only part of the equation though. The other part is making sure those followers are active; [...]
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3 Ways Local Small Businesses Can Use PPC
Jan 25th
Local small businesses rarely use Google AdWords to its full potential. AdWords can be a powerful tool to generate instant traffic. You can also test messaging for later use on other advertising platforms and enable remarketing to create branding.
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7 Creative Ways Your Brand Can Use Pinterest
Jan 19th
Finding new and exciting ways to engage with your customers online can help to revitalize a stale social media marketing campaign. Pinterest, a new image sharing social site, has built quite an online buzz and some brands are using the platfo…
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Cartoon: Ways to Improve Cloud Security
Jan 15th
We continue our series of cartoons from Cloudville, that mythical but somewhat familiar place where the laws of IT don’t quite seem to apply. This week we take another look at cloud security, and it reminds me of Doc Searls buzzword generator that you can find here if you want even more humor in your life.
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(click to enlarge)
SHI Cloud CLOUDVILLE Cartoon by Dave Blazek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at blog.shicloud.com.
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10 Ways Facebook Is Integrating Into Your TV, Music, Games, Cars & Cameras
Jan 14th
The world’s biggest social network wants to change the way you share TV shows, music and games. Think frictionless sharing meets social TV for all media. Given what Facebook recent announcements about integration with cameras and cars, is full media integration? If you’re still unsure, take a hint from this: Earlier this week, Facebook announced frictionless sharing for your TV with Boxee.
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Facebook is integrating with DIRECTV for social discovery of programs and movies. You can see what their friends are watching, and then start watching those shows immediately or, just save them for later.
With the IntoNow iPhone app, you can identify the shows your friends are watching by analyzing the audio signal. Then you can share those TV shows with your Facebook friends.
Trident is not a bubblegum app. It’s yet another apps for seeing what shows your friends are watching, liking and commenting on.
The U-Verse social TV app integrates directly with the Facebook Platform. You can share what you’re watching and what you “like.”
Zeebox is a social TV app with a slightly different twist. Instead of just seeing what your friends are watching and liking, you can also post those shows directly to your Facebook Timeline.
The Snapstick app for Facebook Timeline is designed for playing and watching video, listening to music and surfing channels with your friends. Web content is streamed directly to your TV.
With the Xbox app, you can share game achievements with friends, which seems more useful than just dumping them into the crowded Facebook news feed. You can also share shows, music and pictures taken with their Kinect device.
The Slacker Radio app is similar to frictionless sharing music services Spotify, MOG and Rdio. You discover and listen to music with friends through Web or mobile devices.
Earlier this week, Kodak launched two Facebook-integrated cameras and two apps; could these two moves save Kodak from its tenuous pre-bankruptcy state?
Facebook and Mercedes-Benz announced a new Facebook app that allows drivers to access Facebook friends and restaurants that their friends have “liked.” The new feature will be available in the 2012 SL-Class Mercedes this upcoming spring.
With integration of cars, cameras, music, TV and games, will Facebook become your one true login?
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Small Biz New Year’s Resolution: 7 Ways to Improve SEO in 2012 – Business Insider
Jan 12th
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Small Biz New Year's Resolution: 7 Ways to Improve SEO in 2012
Business Insider I know, many small businesses are already doing SEO, but they can make more improvements to their SEO strategies and make their websites easier to find on search engines. SEO is important and became more sophisticated over the years. … GUESTLINES ANNOUNCE THE LAUNCH OF THEIR SERVICE APARTMENT IN COIMBATORE |
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Three Ways a Test Crawl Could Uncover Hidden SEO Dangers – Search Engine Journal
Jan 11th
 Search Engine Journal |
Three Ways a Test Crawl Could Uncover Hidden SEO Dangers
Search Engine Journal In November I wrote a post explaining how just one line of code could destroy your SEO. It underscored the fact that sometimes hidden dangers can kill your SEO efforts. In addition, it also explained how a thorough audit can reveal those issues and get … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Three Ways a Test Crawl Could Uncover Hidden SEO Dangers
Jan 11th
In November I wrote a post explaining how just one line of code could destroy your SEO. It underscored the fact that sometimes hidden dangers can kill your SEO efforts. In addition, it also explained how a thorough audit can reveal those issues and get your site back on track SEO-wise. Well, I’m back with [...]
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