CHAPTER 8
Utilization of Resources: Strategy & Collaboration

Deploying resources and controls to protect the utilization of intellectual property and copyright is a huge challenge. How do you know if employees are sending out confidential information in blog posts or Twitter messages? Or, if you are Apple, how do you know if an employee has taken out the latest iPhone5 for a spin and started tweeting about the latest developments? Or maybe a nurse at your hospital, as in the case of HealthPark Medical Center, is sharing patient information on Facebook.

Companies have a hard time knowing about all the information being sent from their networks via communication channels such as e-mail or FTP or through web browsers. Add social media to the mix and it becomes an even greater challenge. Traditional security controls like firewalls and antivirus products are focused on data elements such as a SQL database or an important spreadsheet that contains customer information. These controls are easy to implement. Companies have also increased their monitoring and blocking capabilities with new technologies that can inspect every packet going into and out of the network. However, many Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools, although available from companies such as McAfee, are not widely deployed. A new breed of products is coming on the market but we predict adoption will be slow as many companies still do not understand the risks of social media.

In our framework, Utilization of resources is about the implementation of secure social media capabilities and tactics across technologies and policies to protect intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, and confidential data. The use of an organization’s protected information on social media poses the additional challenges on which this chapter focuses. We’ll look at the processes, tools, and tactics needed to prevent data from exiting your organization through social media channels.

In this chapter, we also cover the capabilities needed to secure your company’s intellectual property. Many IT departments are not implementing the methods available for addressing social media concerns. We also discuss the relevant capabilities of the blocking, monitoring, and reporting tools that need to be in place.