The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Needleman recently detailed that more small businesses are monitoring employee computer use to thwart cyberslacking and ensure proper security. As Web 2.0 sites (like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) continue to be vital business tools for research and networking – many organizations are struggling to find an ideal balance. While these sites are crucial, they can expose a business to serious malicious content and can be a HUGE drain on productivity.

Sarah’s article details Websense’s commitment to helping organizations ensure Internet use is safe, efficient and productive, giving each organization the right and flexibility to allow employees a safe level of access. 

With Websense Inc.'s software, business owners can control what time of day employees visit certain websites, such as limiting access to Facebook or Gmail to a designated lunch hour. Owners can also prevent workers from sending or receiving information from specific online destinations, and block offensive and malicious content—such as pornographic images, foul language and links to harmful websites—from appearing on workers' desktops.

Over the past two weekends, malicious infectious campaigns on Facebook have gained a lot of attention. First came the Websense Labs discovery of the Facebook’s Sexiest Video  exploit. A second massive infection of Facebook occurred again last weekend, using the same technique, this one on Distracting Beach Babes. 

Yesterday – Websense Labs managed to get a hold of the source code of the malicious Facebook application and investigated how it works. Both Computerworld and eWeek have written articles investigating these recent attacks and the source code behind them.

 eWeek reporter Brian Prince writes how Google's newest addition to the social media landscape gets smacked with a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). 

Ericka Chickowski of Channel Insider reports that Websense rolled out the industry's first real-time security application for Facebook pages as a part of its Defensio 2.0 launch. The product gives channel partners a more robust way to help clients adapt to the Web 2.0 and social media environment without instituting bans against applications such as Facebook.

The article goes on to say "Armed with both Websense Web Security Gateway and Defensio, enterprises are able to attack the Web 2.0 risks on two fronts: for end users and for clients and other viewers of corporate blogs and Facebook pages. Defensio protects the former, while the gateway defends the latter."

Read the full article by clicking here. 

This article in Network World Canada says that simply keeping anti-virus and firewall signatures is not necessarily enough to keep organizations safe from all security threats.  With threats such as last year’s Conficker worm, Zeus Trojan, and Koobface worm, industry experts warn phishing, social networking and smart phones are methods miscreants will use to get data and vandalize IT systems.

Fiaaz Walji, Country Manager for Websense Canada, says that the growing popularity of social networking sites have increased the potential security threats. “The top 65 per cent of Web sites are user generated content, whether it’s a blog or Youtube or a social networking site,” Walji says. “The Web 2.0 world is the most vulnerable, no matter how much you have invested in firewalls and anti-virus. They change on an hourly basis if not more quickly.”

Walji said users should have services that get threat updates constantly. Otherwise, companies could end up with keyloggers on their systems, losing data and losing the confidence of customers.

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