A survey commissioned by McAfee and conducted by  research firm Vanson Bourne of more than 1,000 organizational decision-makers in 17 countries worldwide has investigated how organizations balance the risks and benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies.

The findings show high Web 2.0 adoption: three out of four organizations worldwide use Web 2.0 for a variety of business functions such as IT (51 percent), marketing and sales (34 percent), customer relations (29 percent), advertising and public relations (28 percent) and human resources (22 percent). The main driver for Web 2.0 adoption is new revenue potential and only 42 percent of those surveyed felt strongly about the importance of present Web 2.0 tools.

Security is a leading issue. Half of the organizations say it is their primary concern for Web 2.0 technologies. For another third, security is the main reason they don’t use Web 2.0 more widely. Six out of 10 organizations suffered large losses averaging $2 million each because of security incidents during the past year. Together, more than $1.1 billion was lost by these organizations due to security incidents.

One of the main sources of security threats is employee use of social media. Thirty-three percent of organizations worldwide restrict employee use of it; 25 percent monitor use; and 13 percent block all social media access. Social network sites are regarded as the main security threat of all social media tools. As a result, nearly half of the organizations we surveyed block Facebook. Two thirds of organizations worldwide have social media policies for employees, and 71 percent of those use technology to enforce them. However, that leaves one third of organizations without a social media policy, and almost half of the organizations lack a policy for Web 2.0 use on mobile devices.

Read the full report:

Web 2.0 - A Complex Balancing Act

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