Social Media Security Wave: Facebook’s Latest Partnership with Websense

Tags: facebook, security, websense

Facebook is making more of an effort to limit the social media maliciousness madness. To address this, Facebook and Websense teamed up recently to protect Facebook’s users from third-party malicious URLs spam. Websense is adding a layer of security to the social networking giant's existing protection measures in hopes of preventing users from clicking on links without understanding where those clicks may lead.

The solution is live now. Here is how it works: when a user clicks on any link in Facebook, Websense uses its ThreatSeeker Cloud Malware Identification platform to analyze each URL in real-time for potential malicious content. If Websense determines that the link is malicious, users will be warned and shown an intermediate page that offers them the following choices:

·         Continue at their own risk

·         Return to the previous screen

·         Get more information on why the page is flagged as suspicious

This development is not unexpected. The rapid spread of social media has put many organizations at risk. It is sure that users of various social networks cannot live without them and they will access them from anywhere. Further, social media is increasingly being exploited as the means for vulnerabilities and threats. Cybercriminals are focusing now in distributing malware through social networking sites and this will create new threats in any organization's network or to individual’s devices. Overall, IDC believes that over the coming years the number of cyber attacks will continue to increase.

Key Points:

1.    For a few organizations, social media tools are considered risky from a security standpoint. They are least valuable to organizations; however they bring great value among adopters or users. As social network applications gain acceptance and are allowed into enterprises, they also bring with them concerns over the potential of a security breach as a result of the increasingly complex forms of malicious attack vectors. Here is a business opportunity for security vendors who plan to create innovative new offerings that take advantage of the fast scalability of the social-media security. 

2.     Facebook is the world’s largest social network with more than 800 million users and is becoming more and more essential for companies of any size as well as for individual users. Most businesses recognize that Facebook has the potential to generate tremendous value for their business. As a result, they are able to respond in near real time, which can ultimately lead to actions that improve the business.

3.    Facebook has many future plans like integrating social into the media consumption of watching, listening to, and reading content and doing so using Facebook's platform. Facebook's innovations will also help accelerate the growth of the company's advertising business. However, with different types of social-engineering attacks, it is possible to persuade people to click on malicious links, allowing backdoors or other malware to be installed. Facebook or any other social network's site has a responsibility to protect their users. Protecting a site the size of Facebook is a major undertaking. The Facebook-Websense announcement is only a beginning. Many such measures are required as more and more people use Facebook for their everyday communication.

4.     Malware infections are increasing as a result of social media use. IDC's recent Asia/Pacific security survey results show that respondents believe their organizations suffered from an increase in malware activities. To mitigate the risks created by social media, certain technologies are preferred. Secure Web gateways with real-time content analysis and data-loss prevention can block advanced malware and data-theft attacks, many of which seek entry through social media.

There is no doubt that Facebook, like any well accepted social media platform, has become a breeding ground for malware and other malicious links. Thus, in recent times, Facebook has employed numerous security mechanisms to protect its sites and users. This year in May, Facebook partnered with Web of Trust for increased protection. Web of Trust will continue to provide its protection services to Facebook. Web of Trust mainly checks links which are marked as malware or spam. By adding Websense, a cloud-based solution, they further enhance the security offered to Facebook users. The partnership is yet to prove its effectiveness on the world's largest social-networking Web site, but giving the current attack rate, any form of additional protection is a good thing.