With the introduction of Google Buzz this week there has been a lot of talk about how this is going to change communications. Of course, these are the same conversations people were having about Google Wave and how Wave was going to change collaboration for corporations and become the de facto enterprise software that was going to take on WebEx, Sharepoint and other collaboration software out there.

Now, it's Buzz that's for the enterprise, as announced by Google. The company is going to developing tools for the enterprise with Buzz and hopes that it will help move more people to Google Apps and the cloud, in it's continued battle with Microsoft. 

All of this, though, comes with security questions. Both Wave and Buzz allow people to share information - links, documents and more - easily with one button links and uploads. Already, there are concerns about Buzz regarding security (although more identity security than data security) with the leakage of contacts that is just put out there on people's profiles (who you chat and email with is really only your own concern). But the real issue is the ease of sharing data and documents with anyone in your network - personal or professional - and how easy it is to share the wrong information.

Last quarter, we announced how PacketSure works with Twitter and Facebook, ensuring that data is protected and preventing data loss. In the same press release, we noted that the engineers were looking at Wave and how that affects DLP; now, we will of course be looking for the enterprise version of Buzz and seeing how that works, as well as taking a look at the consumer version of Buzz.

With all these social media tools - ones that we also love and use - we are not talking about becoming Luddites (or neo-Luddites), but we do believe that any good DLP policy includes employee education. While we stop information from being accidentally leaked, the educated employee understands what should and should not be shared (due to federal regulations and compliance, and more). With the ease of Buzz and Wave, that brings it more to the forefront. And we continue to work on PacketSure to make sure that our customers are protected no matter what new services are out there.

Palisade Systems CEO Christian Renaud will be speaking on a panel in West Des Moines, Iowa for the Des Moines Business Record/Hanser and Associates 2010 survey of business use of social media.  If you are reading this, then you already know that Palisade Systems leverages social media extensively in communicating with our customers, vendors, and press/analysts.  If you plan to be in the area, this should be a worthwhile use of your time.

You can register here.

Confession: I am a social media junkie.

I have been blogging, tweeting, and FaceBooking, not to mention heavily leveraging synchronous social mediums like Virtual Worlds, since forever.  During this time, I've seen all manner of public tweets that were intended to be direct messages. Inadvertent FaceBook postings that caused arguments, breakups, and worse.  Drunken blogposts late at night that were syndicated to the world via RSS before the (now sober) author tried to delete their tracks.

All of these are the small downside for the powerful productivity and social benefit that society has gained as a result of social media tools.  We are connected in ways we wouldn't have considered possible even a decade ago, and are continually in contact with all of our friends and family through vacations, travel delays (often related hashtags), childbirth, weddings, political uprisings, and even bad-boss behavior.

Every useful tool also has, unfortunately, the potential for unintended consequences.  Just as the aforementioned mistaken status updates were damaging to friendships, the 'wrong window' problem can be a potential data-loss point for organizations as well.  Being heavy users of these technologies at Palisade (see our Twitter feed), we recognize that organizations need to ensure that their sensitive information isn't inadvertently being posted or tweeted.  This was the motivation behind today's announcement of the successful conclusion to our internal certification efforts for Data Loss Prevention for social media tools.  We extensively tested both web-based applications as well as popular third-party applications that leverage different network ports and protocols to make sure our customers were protected from data loss over Twitter and Facebook.  Just as email, instant messaging, and web-applications can be unwitting accomplices in accidental data loss, so can these emerging communications platforms.

You're covered.  You can relax.  Get back to focusing on the upside of these powerful tools, and leave the worrying to us.

Christian

Today, Robert Half Technology – a provider of IT professionals for project or full-time engagements – came out with a survey on how Chief Information Officers are looking at social networks, and how much time they are allowing their employees to spend on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.
From the survey,

CIOs were asked, “Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work?”

Their responses:
•    Prohibited completely: 54%
•    Permitted for business purposes only: 19%
•    Permitted for limited personal use: 16%
•    Permitted for any type of personal use: 10%
•    Don't know/no answer: 1%

It is an interesting take on social networks, and one that corporations need to think about as they institute policies and implement DLP solutions; as many corporations are at a cross roads in social networking and social media – do we monitor, do we allow our employees to become spokespeople for the company, how much leeway do we give – it is interesting that more than 50 percent of CIO’s are already prohibiting employees from using social networks at the office.

This is an interesting juxtaposition with the recent comments made by President Obama regarding being careful on Facebook. As noted in the Gartner blog, Obama became part of the data leakage worriers.

But, it IS a valid concern. Corporations – from the small and medium sized enterprise, to the multinational conglomerate – need to think about and prepare for data loss and data leakage, and where that might come from. Companies such as Palisade are the professional worriers: we think about how and where data loss might happen, and make sure that our PacketSure products can catch the bad data before it gets out there, and help protect the company.

While DLP solutions are just one aspect of social networks – the other key part is knowledge, education and sense – it is a good protection on the Web with IM and social networks.