Sep

29

Access denied to social networks

Filed Under Web 

There is a good chance that if you work for any decent sized company, they probably have some type of web filtering software in place to prevent you from accessing certain websites. One of the most popular companies that provides these services is Surf Control. If you take a look at their website, they summarize their software by stating this:

“SurfControl’s portfolio of software, on-demand services, and appliances provide you with better-than-ever protection against Internet and e-mail threats, resource abuse and business risk.”

Are social networks really a threat? Sure these types of web filters are great at stopping people from accessing websites that are unsafe and inappropriate for work, but what kind of threat does facebook or LinkedIn have against work computers besides possibly lowering employee productivity? So I guess social networks would fall under “resource abuse”.

There is certainly more business people using facebook now that a year or two ago since they opened up the site. This article by InformationWeek explains how large companies now have many employees that join the site as part of their companies network. This is very common, especially for some of the larger Fortune 500 companies with thousands of employees who all share the same employer.

This should be common sense, but I think most importantly employees should be very careful of what they have on their account for other people to see. It is up to that person to make sure that privacy settings are in place and that their profile does not share too much information that could lead to a bad image (You may want to leave that drinking group and take out “sleeping all day” from your interests). As time goes on, will companies continue to deny access to these sites or open up and let their employees use them hoping that some good could come out of it? My guess is they will continue to clock them, but if they are smart, they will figure out a way to incorporate the power of social networks to connect their employees. If they have no intention of building their own employee social network, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take advantage of facebook’s API to reach out to employees and the huge pool of users for possible recruiting.

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Comments

  • Feel free to tell me about your experiences with web filtering at work.
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