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Web 2.0 technologies and services offer a great deal of potential to organisations, providing they ensure that security measures are put in place.

That’s according to Gartner, which highlighted the gains in creative productivity that could be achieved through the business use of Web 2.0 tools.

Its report also pointed out that the use of some technologies, such as mashups, is already established and so firms should look to promoting security, rather than banning use.

“Strategies to contain and protect the use of new technologies will always be more effective in the long run than security approaches that rely solely on blocking,” said John Pescatore from Gartner.

He pointed to service-level agreements with content providers as one way of improving security, as well as boosted vulnerability assessments to take into account the risks posed by external use of company content.

A recent study from MessageLabs found that in February, organisations filtered almost 47 per cent of websites falling outside policy parameters, an increase of just under 13 per cent.

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Security software company Sophos has revealed that the US relays more spam than any other country in the world.

Websites in the US are responsible for 28.4 per cent of all spam, followed by South Korea with 5.2 per cent and China, including Hong Kong, with 4.9 per cent.

Russia, Brazil and France are the fourth, fifth and sixth worst respectively for relaying spam, the Sophos report revealed.

Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos, said: ‘It seems as though a major American spammer is arrested every other week at the moment, but despite these high-profile lawbreakers being put away, the US continues to relay far more spam than any other nation on the planet.’

The spamming is not just the work of a few cyber criminals, but represents thousands of people controlling thousands of zombie computers, added Ms Theriault.

Recently, a security report from the Georgia Tech Information Security Centre warned that online videos are the new favoured way for cyber criminals to hide malicious code.

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