Read an interesting article Gartner: Companies shouldn’t bother banning Facebook, social networking
this morning around Gartner’s security guy Andrew Walls and his view on the value of blocking social media.

I tend to agree with his argument that security people risk loosing credibility if they keep saying these sites are dangerous when people use them freely at home and don’t seem to get badly hurt. A real case of the history not supporting the risk statement. And people do keep saying it’s a massive malware risk – letting people browse the Internet is a Malware risk full stop. We haven’t stopped that yet!

I also like his thinking about the relative value to the organization of people with large social networks. They are probably the people who will provide the most value. I think the value it brings is a key input to the risk reward equation that companies use when making these decisions.

But the bit that really struck me was that last year the percentage of Gartner client companies blocking social media was 75%. This year it is at 60%. That’s a big jump in a short time. The absolute percentages won’t represent the broader community – I’m not sure that many companies really filter the Internet. But the relative values still say a lot.

Maybe us security peeps need to “just get over it”.