A New York school district had US$3.8M pilfered by cyber-criminals, who may have used a common banking trojan to gain valid login credentials to the district’s accounts.  The very same trojan making the rounds on social networks like Facebook.  The district has recovered most of the money, but is still out nearly US$500K.

Mafia Wars.  FarmVille.  YoVille.  PetSociety.  Hot or Not.  Texas Hold ‘Em.
Many of you will have played, or seen updates from your friends on the above games – they represent some of the most popular applications on Facebook.  Some of my friends talk about “lost weekends” with various Facebook games, where they get so involved in [...]

This Mashable news article talks about how companies are blocking social networking sites. I would call this an exercise in futility. I say this because users will find a way. Social networking, along with IM, Twitter and streaming music have become part of many employees’ daily fabric. When companies try to block these applications, several [...]

Lots of marketing pundits are pushing their constituents to social networking – potentially accelerating a wave of enterprise social networking adoption. What about the risks associated with these applications?

ANALYSIS – Most people would agree that Facebook is a far cry from the early days of Web 1.0 but only a few are willing to admit that it is not only a web site with associated URL but it is rapidly becoming an application platform. This TechCrunch article discusses the progression towards that [...]

ANALYSIS – Just in case you did not have a good reason to stay away from social networking sites, this article from the NY Times should provide one for you. Or at least it will make you think twice about joining and what gets posted. The article outlines the (difficult) process that users [...]

ANALYSIS – This Network World article raises an interesting question. And the answer is Facebook and other web 2.0 applications, can be considered enterprise applications when they are used internally as collaboration, education, and recruiting tools. This trend makes perfect sense for several reasons. First off, new employees are using these tools [...]

ALERT – A new threat on Facebook that tricks a user to download spyware is the latest threat to show up on social networking sites such as Facebook and it raises an interesting dilemma for security practitioners. How should Facebook be treated when it comes to security policies: as a web site, as an [...]

ANALYSIS – Google Desktop is one of those applications that can be seen as a productivity tool by end-users and a huge security hole by security experts. This CSO article outlines how Google Desktop works and some of the potential ramifications of the indexing and search functions if not configured correctly. More interesting [...]

ANALYSIS – This Network Computing article highlights how T. Rowe Price has embraced Web 2.0 technologies to enable more effective information gathering and sharing. Using wikis, discussion software and instant messaging, T. Rowe Price is reaping the benefits of information sharing, although not without some challenges – mainly resistance to change. One aspect that [...]