Employee social media use 'could result in data loss'

Category: Data recovery

14 August, 2012

Allowing employees to use social media at work could result in malware infections and loss of confidential data.

This is according to Joe Anthony, director of threat protection product management at IBM, who argues that by using such sites, businesses could be exposed to security risks.

Speaking to Infosecurity he said: “Many organisations are not even aware of the social media activities that their employees are participating in.”

“Employees going to any websites, not just social media, or exposing the company to security risks. It is not just going to well-known bad sites,” Mr Anthony claimed.

Disclosure of confidential information is one of the risks of using such sites, as well as the sharing of data on other sites such as DropBox he explained.

This sees employees “exporting confidential information off their machine onto a public website,” which may require data recovery services in order to retrieve it, especially if the information has been illegally transferred.