Ever since Mitch Master Mitch has become a celebrity, he has been receiving more and more fan mail.  Most of it is electronic.  Unfortunately, this includes more potential viruses and social networking threats.  A few weeks ago he received this message from what he thought was Facebook.  The subject read “Join your friends on Facebook”. 

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Has your company adopted a social media policy yet?  Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are increasingly being considered threats for at least a couple big reasons:  security risks and traffic risks.

Use of social medias at work can pose security risks to the company’s intellectual property through an employee’s personal communication habits.  On occasion, attackers assume the identity of someone who hasn’t actually joined sites like facebook.  Then the attacker determines who this person’s friends or schoolmates are and sends friend requests.  Once befriended, the attacker has personal information of users and can make targeted attacks.  Social engineering tactics like this can be very effective, especially when they get users to start sharing URLs leading to malicious sites or spoofs of actual businesses such as your local bank.  In some countries, criminals are not banned from using sites like facebook when they are incarcerated, as The Washington Times recently reported.

Use of social medias at work can also pose network traffic problems for the company.  Read more »

Two Special Cause invitations, two invites to play some Mobster game, two for the Pathword game and enough Farkle invitations to choke a pig.

This is what my Facebook account looks like, and honestly, I don’t really even use it.

But geez, if you want to be a Pirate,  Mobster, Vampire, Superhero or a Farmer who has a green mohawk that owns a pink tractor (Thanks Joanne)… then Facebook is your own world within a world. Take a look at this demographic that I’ve posted here:

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Now for something completely different . . . . .

** UPDATE:  The Keurig My K-Cupis is still awesome and one of the best alternatives for the  greener coffee lover. I just saw a life hacker post that talks about a simple modification that can make stronger (even better) coffee from your Keurig! **

I don’t know why but I got it in my head to reuse the Kcups in our office coffee machine. Don’t get me wrong the Keurig, single cup coffee maker is awesome. I have one at home, but I could never get over throwing the little cups away. Seemed a waste.

At home,  I have the reusable containers. This eliminates the need to use the prepackaged Kcups. After a quick Google search I found these little plastic lids that cover the Kcup, allowing you to reuse it. I figured that I could replicate that here in the office.

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Join the NetFlow Developments group on LinkedIn.

You know when something new in the tech world has become mainstream is when hackers begin targeting it. The recent Twitter worm created by 17-year-old Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney helped put Twitter on the map – although not in a way that Twitter would have liked – and exposed a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the microblogging site.

The self-propagating worm struck Easter weekend infecting some Twitter profiles and making them send messages to their contacts to check out Mikeyy’s StalkDaily.com Twitter-like site. (Read an interview with Mikeyy at the NetNewsDaily site.)

Last year, Facebook was hit by the Koobface worm, twice. Like the Twitter worm, Koobface generated messages to friends of infected users on the social networking site. The messages enticed readers to click on a site to watch a video but only after downloading the latest copy of Adobe Flash – yes, you can guess what happens next.

The Facebook and Twitter worms bring home the message that users need to be vigilant when clicking on links in emails, instant messages, Tweets, and so on, even if they appear to be sent by friends or respected brands.

The popularity of Twitter is also giving a boost to URL shortening services, such as the grandaddy TinyURL and the new kids on the block Bit.ly and TweaK. Since Twitter only allows users to update in no more than 140 characters, users are turning to URL shortening services when they want to include long URLs in their updates. But Mikeyy has shown that even updates apparently coming from your friends may not be kosher.

Some URL shortening services enable users to preview links before they click. TechRepublic has posted a useful guide detailing which services offer this feature and how they work.

We believe that you shouldn’t block social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as they can be beneficial to business, but you can teach your users how to practice safe social networking.

Facebook has details about how to deal with Koobface at its Facebook Security page, and Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder wrote about Mikeyy’s worm in his blog. Security researchers are advising people to disable JavaScript on their browsers to help protect against the Twitter worm. Here are some more security recommendations from Douglas Haider, a Computerworld columnist.

And you know that you can always use Scrutinizer to monitor traffic to these social networking sites.

Just to give you a little about me: I was never really a fan of social networking. I remember once creating a MySpace account, when it was cool to have one, but I got bored with all the upkeep that it required. It’s probably still there too…

My wife just joined the Facebook bandwagon and now she’s addicted to the point that she regularly maintains a profile for me. I think I’ve actually logged into my account maybe twice.

- For the record, if I get one more random quiz or one more request to be a part of someones pirate crew, I’m really gonna have an aneurysm.

But with the incredible growth within the social networking communities, this has created a new avenue for people to introduce their services and products and bring them to the fore. So I decided to be a Plixer PR person by creating a new Twitter account.

You can follow me if you want: @heycharlie <—- There’s my shameless attempt at advertising.

But going back to this blog.

Now that I’ve joined Twitter, I find myself amazed at who is using it. Here I thought that it was going to be full of teenagers talking about bands and bubblegum. To my surprise though, I found that there are tons of people in the IT field who use it on a regular basis.

I personally enjoy being able to help fellow techies battle issues with Cisco NetFlow or sFlow configurations. But there’s a lot of interesting stuff that flies around too; I hear opinions about products, I hear rants about how someone’s “X” network problem is ruining their life. I also hear raves about networking victories.

Maybe social networking is now more practical and useful than it used it be…

If you are not yet part of the Twitter community, hop on board, (not a Pirate reference) and feel free to follow me and a couple of my crazy IT friends. Maybe you’ll find it as useful as I have. If you already Tweet on a regular basis, feel free to leave a comment with your profile link, so the rest of us here at Plixer can share in your online shenanigans.

In 2002, Maine began providing laptops to all middle school students (see Maine Students Hit the IBooks). This month, the state extended the program to include all high school students. This raises a question that I have not yet seen being discussed in print – how will the students’ Internet usage during the school day be monitored?
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I’m in an airport waiting for a flight and reflecting on a meeting I had today with a customer to discuss the future of Scrutinizer. One of the many conversations relating to NetFlow and sFlow revolved around blocking Web sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, CNN, etc., and I think it is a shame. I think nearly everyone would agree that traffic to these networks could mean people are goofing off at work,  but not always.

Your business can benefit from YouTube
Marketing departments in the most successful businesses  today have recognized and are spending time and resources on these Web sites for something called permission based marketing. These sites are critical to businesses looking to learn more about their consumers, competitors and general interests in and around their respective products.

I’ve witnessed on several occasions employees, including myself, watching tutorials on YouTube to better understand how something works. Imagine, free instructional videos on how to do something.  Why would we want  to block that? The time these tutorials can save us from learning the old fashioned way can be considerable.

Company policy is usually the best strategy
Company policy should guide end user Internet behaviors; it shouldn’t be used as a tool for over-zealous managers or network administrators to ban the use of the Web.  Through this effort, they can be taught to police their own behavior. Put obstacles in their way and they will resent management and look for ways to beat the security.

I love my kids
I have two little girls age seven and eight. When they get into an argument that doesn’t seem to resolve itself I step in and usually say something like, “You need to figure out how to resolve this or you are both going to your rooms.” I think 90% of the time the problem disappears. I feel people should be given the opportunity to govern themselves first.

Related post: Are you analyzing Facebook traffic on your networks?

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First it was YouTube, now it’s traffic from Facebook and Twitter that network managers are having to grapple with on their corporate nets. Even if you don’t participate on those sites yourself, you are bound to see your users accessing those places at some point. So what’s your company policy for those sites? Are you allowing them or blocking access because they – especially YouTube and other video broadcast sites – take up too much valuable bandwidth?

If the company policy is to block those sites your company could be losing out on using a valuable tool with which to communicate with your existing and potential customers. And for corporate collaboration, internal microblogging services such as Yammer, which focuses on the business market, is invaluable for getting groups updated without having to remember or type each member’s e-mail address.

For external communications, more and more organizations are using networks like Facebook to build community with their customers. If you’re a Facebook user, you can friend giants such as Ford Motor Company and Cisco and network with their friends. And for your career management LinkedIn is a great way to find contacts at old, existing and potential new employers.

However, such social networks aren’t without their risks. Analysts at Nemertes Research advise companies to “pro-actively develop and enforce policies for employee use of public social networking sites that enables legitimate business use while minimizing risk to intellectual property.” Nemertes says more than 54% of respondents to its unified communications and collaboration research said their organizations uses, is planning to use, or is evaluating social networks for internal and external collaboration.

So it sounds like traffic and bandwidth management is going to be key as organizations drive up the use of social networks. And that’s where Scrutinizer comes in handy with its ability to identify bandwith-hogging apps and more.

* If you’re on Twitter, you can follow your Plixer friends Michael Patterson, Scrutinizer product manager, and Tom Pore, Plixer Field Engineer, Marketing Executive, and Network Administrator.

Since the inception of the internet people have been saying that we were on the cusp of a new era in history – a digital age. One where our lives are linked seamlessly via a mass collective of shared information. On January 20, 2009, as Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, it became painfully obvious that we are no longer on the cusp of this digital age, but entrenched in it.

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