FaceTime survey: IT managers endorse secure and compliant social networking

The survey of the FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions enabling the safe use of Web 2.0 and unified communications in the enterprise, sais that Social Networking is widely accepted by IT respondents, and 51 % plan to beef up security within the next 12 months. Many more IT professionals are reporting that social media is in use at their companies, up from 60 % six months ago to 85 % now. FaceTime surveyed more than 1,100 prospects, customers and other IT professionals identified through Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn. Nishant Jadhav, director of Product Management for FaceTime Communications said: "The widespread acceptance of social networking as a reality for the corporate network is a relatively new phenomenon. However, managers are already recognizing the business value of social networking with 31 % of respondents seeing significant business value and only 21 % seeing no business value." More than half of respondents would like to see specific support for Web 2.0 integrated into their Web security platform and nearly 20 % would deploy dedicated solutions to control Web 2.0. The survey also found that 30 % would not consider a Web security platform that did not     have the ability to secure and manage social networking and Web 2.0 applications. At the same time 32 % said social networking is a critical business collaboration tool. The majority of respondents (87 %) personally use social networks on the corporate network. But about 80 % mentioned information leakage is a primary concern with social networking use. 15 % said social networking is "blocked" on the corporate network. The quantity of those managers who estimate that employees use social networks at work more than an hour per day came up to 51 %.