Is Facebook Really a Threat?

In interesting news today, Palo Alto reported that in corporate users who have access to Facebook, 88 percent of those users are "lurkers", meaning they only watch what's going on and what their friends are posting, as opposed to posting stuff themselves, or playing games on Facebook. In fact the study found that only 5 percent of users played games and only 1.4 percent actively posted updates or comments on Facebook while at work.

It's an interesting observation that we are voyeurs, but one that may be an interesting one for companies that plan on blocking or already block Facebook. The real risks that come from Facebook are loss of productivity, and the possibility of clicking on malware. If users are really just voyeurs and not actively posting their own updates, there may be some loss of productivity, but probably not as much as employers may fear. The threat of malware should be alleviated by making sure their secure web gateway (proxy) has the latest anti-malware and URL filtering software.

The other alternative is of course to allow Facebook browsing, but only during off hours, and placing a coaching page, to alert the end-user that they should be doing so only on their own time during breaks, for example.