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.

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

As more and more companies jump into the Twitter craze, there are a lot of interesting issues that are coming up: it’s only for B2C corporations, it’s for celebrities only, it’s only a customer service vehicle, it’s not a real conversation, or it’s not for B2B companies.

All of these are false, of course. There are many great opportunities for a B2B technology company like Palisasde Systems to be engaged in the conversation on Twitter.

We launched our Twitter account – PalisadeDLP – a few months back. Since the launch of our new Website and blog, we have upped the ante by being more active on Twitter.

Here’s what we are doing on Twitter, and what we are using.

1. All the people that blog are also part of the PalisadeDLP Twitter account

2. Overall we use Hootsuite, but some of us use Tweetdeck or Brizzly – this is, though, not to be considered an endorsement of any Twitter application, just what we are using

3. With the search function, we have been able to join the conversation on security and DLP, offering our insight and point of view on the industry and what we are doing

4. Using Twitter, we have been able to let our followers know about latest products and services, new blog posts, and share thoughts on Data Loss Prevention

5. With Twitter, we are able to follow – and have follow-back – technology pundits, industry analysts, security Twitterers, DLP executives and pundits, and more

6. By building these relationships, we were able to have a discussion with an industry analyst to let her know about what we are up to, and to share information about how Palisade is about the small and medium enterprise

7. With Twitter, we have had DLP pundits direct message us to compliment us on our use of Twitter, saying this is how B2B companies can use Twitter

8. And, we have been balanced by not being only self-promotional, but being a part of the conversation with @ replies, direct messages and just conversations with people

As you can see, as a technology company that services other technology companies, we are part of the conversation with analysts, reporters, and our current and potential customers. Please join us in the conversation, so we can talk about how to make DLP a better understood (and needed) technology, and we can talk about how we can help you.