One of the topics not discussed enough is how to manage risk factors associated with social applications that encourage open sharing, transparency, etc. Under certain situations, the need for organizations to comply with regulatory controls, audit demands and privacy constraints will result in security/risk programs to become a core component within any social media strategy (both internally and externally). That does not mean that security and risk factors trump goals related to social applications - but it does mean that decision makers need to prioritize such issues upstream and work diligently on the behavioral aspects as outlined below:
Among the highlights of the study:
- 66 percent of Millennials regularly access social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace at work, vs.13 percent of other workers.
- 75 percent of Millennials access Webmail at work vs. 54 percent of others.
- 46 percent of millennials use IM at work vs. 22 percent of others.
- Less than half (45 percent) of Millennials stick to company-issued devices or software as opposed to nearly 70 percent of other workers. And 69 percent of Millennials will use whatever application/device/technology they want regardless of source or corporate IT policies (only 31 percent of others).
- Three times as many millennials have downloaded software at work for personal use (75 percent vs. 25 percent).
- Millennials regularly store corporate data on personal devices - far more than others. Common channels are personal PCs (39 percent vs. 24 percent), USB drives (38 vs. 14), personal hard drives (20 vs. 13), and smart phones (13 vs. 6).
Findings of this nature highlight the imperative that organizations face in harmonizing the workstyles of their younger workers with the legitimate security, governance and compliance issues raised by the use of consumer-grade technologies in the enterprise.
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