As a managed IT service provider we get asked about social media a lot. Many companies are worried, not just about the time their employees are spending on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter during working hours, but also the security challenges the use of these sites present for their businesses.

This isn’t a new issue. In fact, it’s one that’s been unavoidable for many years now – especially since the ongoing success and adoption of Facebook (in particular), making it impossible to ignore.

The solution used to be simple: block Facebook and Twitter entirely and do not allow your staff to access these sites at all. But the issue has become evermore complex. Not least because Facebook and Twitter, for many companies, now form an essential part of their business strategies.

There are a reported 1.5 million business Facebook pages and alarmingly 1 in 5 links are in fact malicious. That’s a huge amount of potential threat to business. And that’s before we’ve talked about games applications that contain malware.

So how do we plug the security gaps that open up as the use of social media increases and the usage across varying business functions is more widespread? Simple. We take back control. But not in a way that restricts productivity. What we need is application control.

Application control is a service provided by our favoured firewall partner, WatchGuard. Watchguard continually evolves its solutions to keep pace with the newest challenges facing organisations of all sizes. Its XTM appliance includes Application Control capabilities that empower administrators to exercise fine-grained control over hundreds of applications, and understand which applications are being used and by whom.

So what does that mean? It means you can shut down parts of an application, for example Facebook chat. This is great news if your business is making use of a Facebook page but you know that staff have no requirement for the chat functionality offered by the app – which is a potential security risk.

So how does application control actually work? Well, within the WatchGuard XTM configuration tool, the administrator sets up a global policy or a more granular one covering specific users, groups, networks, or other criteria that determines which applications can and cannot be used. In real time, WatchGuard XTM with Application Control then inspects traffic crossing the appliance and determines which application is producing the traffic. Signature-based technology combined with an engine that assesses application behaviour enables the appliance to identify applications with a high degree of accuracy. The appliance enforces the policy defined by the administrator and logs its actions for review. The administrator can log into the reporting module to see application usage, such as which applications users ran (or attempted to run) and the top applications used across the business.

In short, there’s no need for a blanket blocking of any one application. Now we can look to the individual user and then again their own individual usage. This is not Big Brother going overboard, this makes good business sense, protecting your vital company IP and data in the process.

So you might think you can just add this feature to your existing firewall package, right? Sadly no. 96% of all firewall packages don’t offer application management at all. In fact these packages will soon be obsolete. Therefore  it is widely recommended to seriously consider application control when looking for your next security appliance, or even take advantage of WatchGuard’s ‘Trade Up’ offer, which gives a great price for the XTM when trading in your appliance. You can then benefit from features including:

•    Granular control
•    Breadth of application signatures
•    Ability to identify encrypted applications
•    Incorporation into the policy set
•    Balance of performance with efficacy

Application control is available with WatchGuard’s XTM appliances. For more information visit www.watchguardservices.co.uk/application-control.

Free Trial!
Still not convinced? Rockford IT are currently offering a free 30 day trial for WatchGuard’s application control feature. To take advantage of this offer simply email watchguard@rockford-it.co.uk before 30th June 2011.
For more details simply contact us at info@rockford-it.co.uk.