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Businesses are missing out on the benefits that Web 2.0 technologies have to offer them, according to an expert.

Many executives think Web 2.0 is a drain on their resources but in fact is a way of engaging with partners and customers and is simply an extension of email, according to the chief executive of IT Governance, Alan Calder, who was speaking in CIO magazine.

‘There is a genuine need for CIOs to enable people to use this technology to benefit the firm,’ he told CIO magazine.

‘No matter what policies a company has in place, people will tell other people what it is like to work there, whether it is through Facebook or a blog and everyone has a computer at home today.’

Banning use of the sites is also effectively saying to young people who use the sites that they are not wanted, and senior management had to understand that the technology is ‘embedded in the way of life’ of younger people.

‘Young workers feel that Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, blogging and Flikr, are key to how they do their job,’ he said.

He did sound a note of caution however, warning that businesses need to be careful with the technology, for instance with the posting of litigious comments.

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A List Apart, a web magazine for people who make websites, is asking for participants for their 2008 worldwide survey of people involved in making this thing called the web.

If you are at all involved in the development, programming, management, design or anything else to do with the production of websites, they’d like you to take part (and so would we!).

Take the 2008 survey.

2007 survey

You can download the findings from the 2007 survey from A List Apart, along with a bunch of anonymised data.

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Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been warned to not underestimate threats to their security, in light of a report by McAfee.

Most of those surveyed did not think they were a prime target for attack.

Just under half (46 per cent) did not think an attack on them would make a cybercriminal money, while just over half (52 per cent) thought they were too small to be noticed.

This was reflected in the fact that 43 per cent just used their IT equipment’s default settings and didn’t customise security.

However, nearly a third of the businesses had been attacked at least four times in the past three years, with a quarter of those attacks taking a week to recover from.

‘Just because a business is small does not mean that it is immune to security threats,’ said McAfee’s senior vice president of the mid-market segment, Darrell Rodenbaugh.

‘For businesses of all sizes, viruses, hacker intrusions, spyware and spam can lead to lost or stolen data, computer downtime, decreased productivity, compliance issues, lost sales and even loss of reputation.’

Time management was also considered to be a factor in SMBs poor security practices, with 42 per cent having less than an hour to spend on security.

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