Secure SNS sites

Companies should secure employee usage of social networking sites, as MySpace has joined Facebook in allowing users to develop and upload their own applications for other users to run on their online accounts, warned WorkLight, a Web 2.0 security specialist.

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing and product strategy with WorkLight, said: ‘The applications gallery launched this week by MySpace is similar to Facebook applications in allowing users to run vetted code extensions on MySpace accounts.’

‘However, as the BBC's technology programme Click proved last week, it is perfectly possible, in just a few hours, to create an application that can appear to carry out a normal task, but quietly access private information in the background. And if you can do this on Facebook, you can almost certainly do the same for MySpace,’ he added.

According to Lavenda, with the proliferation of social networking sites in the workplace, it is critical that companies provide a secure environment for employees who use social networking sites to get things done at work.

‘Social networking sites have enormous benefits on the B2B and B2C sales promotion and customer interaction front, but it is important that companies minimise the counter benefits that insecure access to these services can create,’ he explained.