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Twitter Presents Reasons To Fear It
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-12-20
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The one-to-many model of "tweeting" a message to a broad group of people on Twitter could pose a challenge to the more highly paranoid security pros out there.
 | | Twitter Presents Reasons To Fear It |  |
Strength in numbers may be a little too much for those working IT security in the business world.
ZDNet blogger Michael Krigsman sounded the 'sky is falling' alarm about the vast number of people a single Twitter could reach from a confidential meeting:
Even seemingly innocuous comments, when put before a large group of people, can be analyzed more rapidly, and in more depth, than you might expect. This can easily cause ranges of unintended, highly negative, consequences.
He offers choices of ignoring Twitter, blocking it, or developing policies about its use. Ultimately, it comes down to enforcing corporate policies.
This approach assumes people would do their Twittering from a PC. If that's the case, blocking the service or enforcing corporate policies on usage of network resources applies.
When it comes to meetings, especially the sensitive ones Krigsman used as an example, attendees who might toss off a casual tweet to the masses for that frightening hive-mind assessment by followers could be using a cellphone rather than a laptop machine to do this.
It doesn't take a powerful smartphone to do a tweet. Any modern handset with texting capabilities can do them. The truly paranoid security pro could insist in some companies that attendees need to surrender their phones before joining a sensitive meeting.
All of this might be a little too extreme, as a post at Yourdon Report suggested. Ed Yourdon said the conversations he's seen on Twitter have been careful to avoid mentioning anything sensitive.
"Michael, lighten up!" Yourdon said.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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