Recently I sat down to talk to David Jacquet of InfoSec Group to talk about some of the security risks inherent in social media activity, and what businesses can do to alleviate those risks. Below is the transcript of that interview. For those of you with really short term attention spans I’ve summarized some of David’s points into a blog post over at Fast Company.com called The 5 Biggest Social Media Security Risks for Businesses.
For those of you who think even that’s too long, well, you probably already stopped reading.
Rich: Today I’m going to be talking to David Jacquet of InfoSec Group. What we’re going to be talking about are some of the issues arising around information security and general security when it comes to social media.
David, thank you very much for being here with us today.
David: You’re welcome, my pleasure.
Rich: Just to start off with a really basic question, what is information security?
David: Information security is understanding that as a business or an organization or an entity, we have assets and that those assets needs to be protected.
Information security is basically a business goal and it’s the idea of protecting those assets from unauthorized third parties.
Rich: How does that then tie into social media ‒ things like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on?
David: Because information security, as I said, is a business goal, it encompasses protecting any assets which may or may not be shared in the context of doing business.
If people are going to be using social media, presumably they’re going to be talking about a fair amount of information that belongs to their entity, organization or company. Some of that information may be of a confidential nature and therefore needs to be protected.
It’s the idea of trying to make sure that we do not expose the organization to undue risk through the use of social media.
Rich: Let’s talk a little bit about that risk. What do you think some of the biggest risk issues are when it comes to using social media and keeping our information secure?
The other day I presented at a tourism conference on social media. By a show of hands I asked how many people were on Twitter, had Facebook fan pages, and blogged. I was surprised–and a bit disappointed–that blogging trailed Twitter and Facebook. 
