As Companies Relax on Social Media, Threats Increase

Even as social media has grown to be a much more widely accepted form of communication among businesses over the years, there is still plenty of data out there depicting the flaws and setbacks that can occur when social networks are used in the business environment. Just as with email or web surfing in general, there are security concerns, and a new report (pdf) from security firm Sophos claims that malware and spam have increased by as much as 70% on social networks from a year ago.

How big of a security concern do you find social media to be? Discuss here.

The firm surveyed over 500 organizations and found that 36% of users claim to have been sent malware via social networking sites, which is an increase of 69% from last year.

"Computer users are spending more time on social networks, sharing sensitive and valuable personal information, and hackers have sniffed out where the money is to be made," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The dramatic rise in attacks in the last year tells us that social networks and their millions of users have to do more to protect themselves from organized cybercrime, or risk falling prey to identity theft schemes, scams, and malware attacks."

Of course front and center of everybody's attention is Facebook, the world's most popular social network. Sophos found that out of those surveyed, 60% believe Facebook poses the biggest security threat out of social networks, compared to just 18% naming MySpace, 17% naming Twitter, and 4% naming LinkedIn.

"We shouldn’t forget that Facebook is by far the largest social network – and you’ll find more bad apples in the biggest orchard," says Cluley. "The truth is that the security team at Facebook works hard to counter threats on their site – it's just that policing 350 million users can't be an easy job for anyone. But there is no doubt that simple changes could make Facebook users safer. For instance, when Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the Internet."

Although LinkedIn was cited as the network among the top four that sparks the least amount of concern from survey participants, Cluley notes that it has its own significant risk factors, which should not be overlooked.

"Targeted attacks against companies are in the news at the moment, and the more information a criminal can get about your organization’s structure, the easier for them to send a poisoned attachment to precisely the person whose computer they want to break into," he explains. "Sites like LinkedIn provide hackers with what is effectively a corporate directory, listing your staff’s names and positions. This makes it child’s play to reverse-engineer the email addresses of potential victims."

According to Sophos' findings, 49% of firms allow all their staff unfettered access to Facebook, a stat that is up 13% from last year.

"The grim irony is that just as companies are loosening their attitude to staff activity on social networks, the threat of malware, spam, phishing and identity theft on Facebook is increasing," says Cluley. "However, social networks can be an essential part of the business mix today, and the answer is not to bar staff from participating in them, but to apply some 'social security' instead."

As Cluely suggests, social networks have simply become part of the way we do business. At this point for a lot of companies, shutting down access in not an option. The reality is that no matter which way you communicate online, there are going to be threats. This is true not only in the corporate world, but in general life. As social networking becomes more location-oriented, you have to wonder if cyber crime might lead to an increase in physical world crime. That's a scary thought.

Is social media worth the security risks to your company? Share your thoughts.


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Making the AdSense Ads suit your website – Part 2 (Color of Ads)

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website is an easy job that can really enhance the effectiveness of your AdSense Ads (and hence increase the AdSense revenue for you). The four properties that contribute towards making the AdSense Ads look in-place on your website are – size,  shape, color and positioning of the Ads. Though none of these properties can be regarded as more important than the others, the color of Ads is surely one thing that can help a lot in making the Ads blend with your website or making them stand out. Let’s take a closer look at this Ad customization option that Google provides to all the webmasters who use the Google AdSense program for earning revenue.

Color of your Ads:

This is one property of Ads that is fully customizable. You can easily customize the color of your Ads using the color palettes provided by Google; and there are more than 200 colors available. You can choose from several different colors that are available on the color palette (and 200 colors are enough for any website). You can choose colors for Border, Title, Text and URL. You can also set a background color for your Ads. As you select various options, you can see how the ad looks in the preview tool that is shown on the same page as the options; and you can accordingly make adjustments. The color combinations for the various parts of the Ad and for the background should match the color combinations used in the other parts of the website. To make the Ad blend with the website, you can use the background color of your webpage as the background color and the border color for your AdSense Ad. If you want to make the Ads stand-out, you can use contrasting colors for your Ads; however, this is generally not preferred unless you have other elements on the website that use similar colors too e.g. you can have the same background color and text color as the menu options. Once you have the right color combinations, you can save them as custom color palette which you can use later.
Similar color customization options are available for Google AdSense search results page too (as in, Google AdSense for search).