Weighing Security Risks of Facebook and Other Social Networks for SMBs

Nowadays small businesses with limited funds for marketing and advertising are being forced to open their doors and networks to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  While these sites are primarily free, they can end up costing a company a lot of money if their network is not properly secured.

Of course all businesses are vulnerable to security breaches and while large corporations are able to take a hit in terms of money being lost, small and medium size businesses do not always have the funds or the manpower to ward off network security vulnerabilities.  According to a study, incidents involving social media (whether its disgruntled employees trying to defame the company or worms and viruses getting on the network) the average amount of money spent is around $4 million.  Most SMBs cannot afford to pay this price.

So, what should small and medium businesses do?  Should they lock down social media sites so no employees can use them?  That's correct right?  Wrong.

SMBs need to have the proper protection.  Most of them use consumer or household level firewalls or other protection.  Many are not aware that these are not good enough to protect their networks and IT infrastructure so they end up being open and vulnerable to attacks and malicious software.

A lot of times all that is needed is the right protection.  What that means is that social networks don't need to be locked down, but instead can be restricted for business use only.  Next Generation Firewalls can help with this.  They can give small and medium business (but also large ones) the right protection and assurance that their network is safe and being used for what they designate it for.

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