Beyond Business: the future of social media

Matthew Lees
Senior Contributing Editor - Patricia Seybold Group

Clive Longbottom
Service Director, Business Processes Facilitation - Quocirca

Dr. Anton Chuvakin
Consultant - Security Warrior

Editor: Ali Klaver
Published by: IMI Publishing
Publish date: 2010/ 11/18

Introduction:
As the prevalence and influence of social media applications such as Facebook and
Twitter rise in the workplace, so do the headlines about the security risks for the
enterprise. As a growing number of companies use these applications for business
functions there is a constant worry over lost productivity, or worse, leaking sensitive
information on social media networks.
Earlier this year eyebrows were raised when a bogus analyst gained access to
dozens of US security and intelligence officials by tricking them in a social networking
experiment. This example highlights what IT management has feared all along; social
networking as a real threat to security.
But is blocking social tools the answer? Not necessarily. In this blockbuster issue of
ET M, Bradley Anstis from M86 Security reveals how to successfully marry social media
with business and talks about what tools to use (page 48).
The Q4 edition also tunes in to the growing call for video conferencing in the
office. Irwin Lazar from Nemertes Research talks to experts from Tanberg (Cisco),
ACT Conferencing and Vidyo Inc., on the best way to integrate and use telepresence
techniques now and into the future (page 10).
Scott Crawford from Enterprise Management Associates also joins us once again
to lead a panel discussion on application security, rounded out nicely with the help of
Codenomicon, Fortify, IBM Rational and Veracode (page 52).
Plus, we have four information-packed research pieces on BPM, log management,
enterprise search, and social tools.
As always, ET M has tackled the most important themes affecting the technology
world today and we hope you enjoy reading all about it. A wide range of topical podcasts
are also available at www.globaletm.com

Thank you for reading, and if you would like to contribute to any future issues of
ET M please feel free to contact me via email at aklaver@imipublishing.com