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notifying employees of clear rules on what is acceptable and what is not, balancing the need to monitor with the employees' reasonable expectations of privacy and weighing the overall benefits of allowing personal usage against the risks of doing so, are all issues with which managers will be familiar.

For employers, the temptation to utilise sites such as Facebook and MySpace may also lead them into trouble. Some employers view the scanning of such sites for information on prospective employees as legitimate; others view it as distasteful and intrusive (the equivalent of rummaging through a candidate's personal items). Whatever the view, employers adopting this approach would do well to heed the warning of the TUC's guidance on online social networking. This guidance reminds employers that only a minority of potential staff will have a public profile on a social network, so using information from this source can give either an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain candidates, as well as leaving the employer open to the accusation of discrimination.

Employers have had to grapple with the issues raised by employee use of the Internet for some years and the rise of online social networking presents another challenge. There is no obvious conclusion here; employers will have to do what they consider to be correct in the light of their business concerns, their employee relations and their business culture. The dilemma posed by the heightened risks surrounding online social networking, whether to trust or restrict employees, does not lead to one "right" answer, but there is certainly a "wrong" answer. Given the ever-growing popularity of such sites and the potential consequences for employers of employee misuse, simply ignoring the issue can only lead to problems for the unwary employer.

CERT'S PODCASTS: SECURITY FOR BUSINESS LEADERS: SHOW NOTES Tackling Tough Challenges: Insights from CERT's Director Rich Pethia Key Message: Rich Pethia reflects on CERT's 20-year history and discusses how he is positioning the program to tackle future IT and security challenges. Executive Summary CERT's vision is a securely connected world. CERT's mission is to enable informed trust and confidence in the use of information technology. To achieve this vision and mission, CERT has broadened its perspective to include the full system/software engineering and operations life cycle and is reaching out to thought leaders in the global IT and security community. In this podcast, Rich Pethia, director of the CERT Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, discusses the past, current, and future state of Internet security and CERT's role in tackling future challenges as CERT celebrates its 20th anniversary. PART 1: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY CERT's Vantage Point CERT's vision is a securely connected world, supported by CERT's mission of enabling informed trust and confidence in the use of information technology. As the director of CERT, Pethia has unique access to government, commercial, and industry leaders. The Good News Internet use continues to grow, not just in size (number of people, volume of traffic) but also in utility, for example: * the increasing amount of real government and business operations * the introduction of new applications * the growing use of new mobile appliances User awareness of the need to address security is increasing along with increasing attention from service providers (firewalls, virus protection, anti-spyware, data backup). Developers are paying more attention to building security into their products. Vendors have more mature processes for providing cost-effective, timely updates for software vulnerabilities. Users are more willing

Schmidt says layoffs from the bad economy will prompt theft of corporate data or damage, aided by the vulnerability of network peripheral devices such as printers

New laws to crack down on Facebook identity fraud

Societies and economies are rapidly changing; and the power of "us" has become far more important than the power of "you"

"Our opportunity is to build a globally connected human network capable of working collectively to address the significant social, economic, and political issues of our time. As leaders, it is our responsibility to lead by collaborative example,"

Google's cloud computing services. On its website, Google repeatedly assures customers that their data is secure and private, while published vulnerabilities demonstrate that it is not.