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Few Top Corporations Establish Formal Policies Limiting Social Networking on the Internet

A sampling of corporate America's top IT executives reveals today's corporations do not have formal policies in place to manage and thus prevent data breaches/network attacks arising from employee social networking, such as instant messaging and surfing social community sites like MySpace.com. The survey was conducted during the twice-annual Storage Networking World Conference, an event designed specifically for IT executives and managers. Co-owned by Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association, SNW is the world's largest IT storage networking event.

As online social networking has increased with popular sites such as MySpace.com and Second Life as well as the use of instant messaging technology, IT executives are faced with a growing concern of protecting their computer networks from viruses and other attacks that can penetrate an IT enterprise from them. Two-thirds of the conference attendees participating in the survey said their companies have no formal social networking policy in place. Of the 33 percent that do have policies in place, 77 percent said their policies covered "selective blocking" while 23 percent said they blocked all external networking.

"These responses show that IT executives are far more concerned with internal threats than they are with the connections the employees are making to external networks," said Thornton May, futurist and Computerworld columnist who was also a featured presenter at SNW. "The only way IT executives can remedy this situation is to institute policy."

Other results from the survey also addressed encryption and computer network downtime. About 54 percent of the conference attendees participating in the survey said their companies had no encryption, while 29 percent only encrypt laptops. About 8 percent encrypt all their company's PCs while 9 percent said "everything" (USBs, etc.) is encrypted.

Also, one-third of the responses said human error was to blame for downtime in IT networks. About 22 percent said IT resource upgrades were a main cause of networks not operating; 15 percent cited "service" failures and 18 percent pointed to network outages.

Storage Networking World came to a close after the nation's top technology executives and managers gathered to discuss the most critical storage networking issues facing organizations today. The event took place April 16 -19 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.

"SNW gave me the insight and the information about what other companies are doing to manage their IT environment," said Michael Israel, senior vice president for Six Flags Theme Parks. "We all work in a scenario where there is never one right answer for everything. It gave me the perfect venue to get the insight that I could not get anywhere else."

About Computerworld

Computerworld is the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide. Computerworld's award-winning weekly publication, Computerworld.com Web site (www.computerworld.com), focused conference series and custom research form the hub of the world's largest (40+ edition) global IT media network. In the past five years alone, Computerworld has won more than 100 awards, including Folio Magazine's 2006 Gold EDDIE Award for the best technology/computing magazine, the 2004 and 2006 Magazine of the Year Award, and 2006 Best Overall Web Publication from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE). Computerworld leads the industry with a print audience of 1,252,000 readers each week (IntelliQuest CIMS Spring 2006) and an online audience of over 2 million unique monthly visitors (Omniture).

About the Storage Networking Industry Association

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of more than 460 member companies and close to 7,000 active individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share the common goal of advancing the adoption of storage networks as complete and trusted solutions. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at http://www.snia.org .

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