Social networking data leaks

As I and many others have discussed before, data leaks are a fact of life when employees are allowed to use communication tools of any kind, including email, instant messaging or even the telephone. Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter have become a key and growing area of concern for many decision makers because these tools are typically used independently of IT management or oversight.

An interesting example of such a data leak - albeit not a corporate one - is an Israeli soldier's post to Facebook about an upcoming raid by Israel's Defense Forces in the West Bank. The soldier's post, which included both the time and location of the operation, prompted the IDF to call it off. More information about the incident is available here.

This should serve as a good lesson for senior business managers, IT management and others in organizations that allow the use of social networking tools: while these tools can be incredibly useful in a business context and their use should be encouraged, unmanaged posting to these sites can result in the revelation of information you might not want the outside world to know.

Osterman Research will be publishing a white paper in March on why organizations need to focus on managing the content that leaves their organization through email, instant messaging systems, social networking tools and other systems.