How the industry views Web 2.0

A recent survey of 100 IT professionals at Infosecurity Europe revealed surprising trends in individual and corporate use of social media.

The Launchpad Europe IT Security Index 2009 was intended to gauge IT professionals’ attitudes towards social media, as well as to compare individual and corporate use of social media.

In contrast with the individual survey, in which 61 respondents reported to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites, only 21 out of 100 respondents reported that their organizations used social media. Eleven of those 21 organisations (52.38%) are using Twitter – an interesting contrast to the individual portion of the survey, in which only 15 of 61 individuals (24.59%) claimed to use Twitter. Facebook was by far the most popular among individuals, with 51 respondents claiming to use it. Fourteen reported to use other social media, including LinkedIn, LiveJournal and MySpace.

According to the survey, companies are more likely to update their websites on a daily basis than individuals are. Ten of the 21 organizations who reported to use social media also said they updated their websites at least once a day. Only a third (20/61) of individuals exerted the same effort; most individuals said they updated their social media websites once or twice a week.

Respondents were also asked to rate their concern about the security of social media on a scale of 1 to 5. Responses varied. Some respondents said that as IT security professionals, they understood the security issues surrounding social media and were therefore less concerned. Other respondents said that as IT security professionals, they saw it as their job to be especially concerned about the security issues surrounding social media. On a scale of 1 to 5, the average concern level was 3.69.