Steve Martino, the company's vice president of information technology, says almost 60 percent of Cisco employees have at least one mobile device connected to IT services, not including laptops, and more than 15 percent have more than one handheld that they use for job responsibilities. In terms of the benefits of deploying such an environment, the costs saved by Cisco for not issuing the devices itself are last on Martino's list, which may be surprising to some.

Instead, employee productivity and engagement take the lead, he says. “Users who have the freedom of choice to bring their own device, are seeing about 30 minutes a day [of] greater productivity than those that are using devices they're not comfortable with,” Martino says. “I think it's comfort, it's familiarity and it's also time and place. Where and when they can use their device. Those are the two drivers.”

Like at Cisco, many enterprises around the world are finally taking note of the advantages that mobility adds to their business. By now, security professionals are quite familiar with the BYOD term, and while the wave of mobile devices flooding the workplace wasn't initially welcomed with open arms by those charged with protecting enterprise networks, it seems as though organizations at every level believe there's no choice at this point but to embrace it.

Many concerns revolve around the additional points of entry available for cyber criminals, increasing the likelihood of sensitive data extraction or creating disruptive scenarios that could be extremely costly for enterprises. And, with looming threats and an increasing number of threat vectors, security pros are faced with a big decision: to lock down or not to lock down. There are pros and cons, many say.

Threats are always present no matter which type of environment is deployed, says Lawrence Reusing, general manager for mobile security at Oakdale, Minn.-based data security firm Imation. He says it's only a matter of time before enterprises have to step up to the BYOD challenge at hand.

“At this point, I'd say that a significant proportion of enterprise and government organizations have accepted that BYOD is here now and is inevitable,” Reusing says. “They assume that it's necessary for organizations to support employee-owned devices.”

To continue reading click here.

Check out SC Magazine's BYOD Spotlight! - Good recommendations on preparing your network for the BYOD movement.

The school sent out letters informing parents about the suspension. Students also received 15 demerits and have been banned from using school computers for the next nine weeks.

Although school officials declined to comment to reporters, at least one parent was quoted in CBS affiliate reporting as blaming school personnel rather than her child for the infraction of the district's acceptable use policy. "Kids should not have been punished for this; they should have punished the person in charge of security; they should have been doing their job," she said.

As reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, one student, a senior and a member of the National Honor Society who was part of the reprimand, said, "I thought it was just a way to get my schoolwork done. I didn't know the severity or the consequences of using this."

According to district policy 815 regulating acceptable use of the Internet, disabling or bypassing the Internet blocking or filtering software without authorization is prohibited. Failure to comply shall result, the document states, "in usage restrictions, loss of access privileges, disciplinary action, and/or legal proceedings."

You can read Dian's article in full at The Journal

Note:  Smoothwall's Guardian Web Security dynamically prevents proxy circumvention by students and employees.

Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. Best friends share locker combinations.

The digital era has given rise to a more intimate custom. It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail,Facebook and other accounts. Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes even create identical passwords, and let each other read their private e-mails and texts.

They say they know such digital entanglements are risky, because a souring relationship can lead to people using online secrets against each other. But that, they say, is part of what makes the symbolism of the shared password so powerful.

“It’s a sign of trust,” Tiffany Carandang, a high school senior in San Francisco, said of the decision she and her boyfriend made several months ago to share passwords for e-mail and Facebook. “I have nothing to hide from him, and he has nothing to hide from me.”

“That is so cute,” said Cherry Ng, 16, listening in to her friend’s comments to a reporter outside school. “They really trust each other.”

We do, said Ms. Carandang, 17. “I know he’d never do anything to hurt my reputation,” she added.

It doesn’t always end so well, of course. Changing a password is simple, but students, counselors and parents say that damage is often done before a password is changed, or that the sharing of online lives can be the reason a relationship falters.

The stories of fallout include a spurned boyfriend in junior high who tries to humiliate his ex-girlfriend by spreading her e-mail secrets; tensions between significant others over scouring each other’s private messages for clues of disloyalty or infidelity; or grabbing a cellphone from a former best friend, unlocking it with a password and sending threatening texts to someone else.

Rosalind Wiseman, who studies how teenagers use technology and is author of “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” a book for parents about helping girls survive adolescence, said the sharing of passwords, and the pressure to do so, was somewhat similar to sex.

Sharing passwords, she noted, feels forbidden because it is generally discouraged by adults and involves vulnerability. And there is pressure in many teenage relationships to share passwords, just as there is to have sex.

“The response is the same: if we’re in a relationship, you have to give me anything,” Ms. Wiseman said.

In a 2011 telephone survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 30 percent of teenagers who were regularly online had shared a password with a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. The survey, of 770 teenagers aged 12 to 17, found that girls were almost twice as likely as boys to share. And in more than two dozen interviews, parents, students and counselors said that the practice had become widespread.

You can read the full piece here at the NYTimes

Neither solution in isolation is ideal - especially if your remit covers a mix of school, publicly accessible, administrative and operational networks.

Remembering that each network has specific user profiles with their own needs and web usage patterns - couple this with different management styles, legal and administrative requirements.  The challenge of delivering a web experience that isn’t unduly restrictive (and conforms to the organisation’s policies) to individuals looks at first glance insurmountable.

The answer to this seemingly intractable problem is simple - mix both central and local deployments.  Manage the systems centrally and devolve (where appropriate) control of policies to local management - a true hybrid web filtering and control solution.

Smoothwall Web Filtering + Security - delivered as a mix of software, hardware and virtualised

Smoothwall Hybrid Web Filtering and Security Deployments

Benefits for Policy Makers

• Centrally controlled impassable ‘red-line’ policies ensuring legislative requirements and organisational values are complied with
• Operates highest recognised standards of filtering and e-safety for children (Department of Education (Becta) Accredited for Education Use)
• Policy management with precise ‘who, what, when, where’ and device level control
• Accessible
• Detailed forensic and evidential quality logging combined with (non-technical) trend and usage reporting portal
• Devolved policy management to non-technical staff

• Integrated Home Office Anti-Terrorist / Illegal Content Blocklist
• Integrated Internet Watch Foundation Blocklist
• Fits British  social and cultural norms - designed, engineered and supported UK

• Co-exists with existing directory services and authentication
• Can be integrated into existing data centres and infrastructure
• Scalable consistent deployment and implementation as software, hardware or virtualised service
• All the benefits of a centrally hosted system with the flexibility of local deployment
• Centralised systems management
• Unified interface and technology platform
• Devolved management of local policies
• Licenced by maximum device count not by users,location or number of deployments
• Dynamic web content analysis with advanced categorisation with daily updates
• Active perimeter protection from web-borne viruses and malware (identity theft, botnets, trojans, spyware, encryption)
• Filter public WiFi and guest devices on networks
• Supports BOYD (‘bring your own device’) schemes with authentication against the local directory service via captive portal
• Local support and advice - designed, engineered and supported in the UK

• Dynamic web content analysis delivers safe content in the classroom
• Operates highest recognised standards of filtering and e-safety for children (Department of Education (Becta) Accredited for Education Use)
• Delivers proper access to diverse web resources
  • YouTube/education
  • Safe Search
  • Social Media (when used in an educational context)
• Manage and unblock uncategorised web pages without referring to IT support (by using the new SWURL feature)
• Allows teachers to focus on teaching not the supporting  IT

• Appropriate and safe access to web for all types of user
• BOYD (Bring You Own Device)
• ‘Light touch’ filtering with the right policy enforced at the right time
  e.g. Facebook at lunchtime only

There are literally millions of us who can’t help ourselves updating and posting when we should be doing something else at work or school.  Help is at hand for those responsible for keeping us on the productive straight and narrow - with a couple of clicks they can help us break our addiction - at least when we’re supposed to be doing something else.

The office and classroom ‘No Facebook Here’ notices can be finally torn up and consigned to the recycling bin.  The outright ban on school and organisation networks of our much loved (in most corners anyway) online playground can at last be repealed.

The clever bods at Smoothwall have engineered a way to make Facebook ‘read only’ - you can look but you can’t click - so you can keep an eye on your wall but not post anything.  Except obviously, when your boss says it’s OK - at lunchtimes, before and after your work hours, in the rec room etc.  It’s sort of a techie way of creating detente - the higher-ups get you to do what you need to be doing - and you don’t feel as cheesed off as you did when they banned it outright.

What’ll they think of next?

CYBER bullying is not just an issue for students, with schools and teachers increasingly under pressure to act on any report or face being sued.

Coulter Roache partner Martin Reid, who practises in workplace relations, said bullying did not have to happen in the classroom for the school to be taken to civil court.

He said both schools and teachers owed students a "duty of care" and could be held liable if they were aware a student was being bullied online by another student at any hour of the day or night and did nothing about it.

"The laws are effectively the same as personal injury laws," Mr Reid said.

"If somebody slips on water at the supermarket and suffers a broken hip, they can sue because the supermarket was negligent in cleaning up the water.

"It's the same if a student is being bullied on Facebook by a fellow student and the school is aware of it, but they do nothing about it.

"It's the general law of negligence ... you must establish there was a duty of care, that it was breached, the student suffered harm and the risk of harm was foreseeable, and the harm was caused by the breach"

Mr Reid said the rise in Facebook and other social media forums was making it increasingly hard for schools to monitor student behaviour.

He said it was important to remember teachers would not be liable if the bullying occurred outside school hours and they were not made aware of it.

In Victoria, there is yet to be a court decision in which a teacher has been held liable for cyber bullying between students.

However, Mr Reid said many schools were aware of the risks and had policies in place to deal with them ...

You can read the full article here

You can read detailed analysis of the issues raised in this article in Smoothwall's e-Safety Law in Education whitepapers that have been developed by the eminent lawyer Dr. Brian Bandey.  You can also discuss many other related issues with fellow professionals in E-Safey in Education LinkedIn Forum.

eSafety practice extends requires more than a single solution, and can involve a change of philosophy beyond the keyboard.

The scheme is headed by The Home Office, The Central Sponsor for Information Assurance (CSIA), The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) - with the backing of many industry sponsors.

Visit their site to find tips on IT safety and data protection, and learn how to protect yourself against viruses, phishing attacks, malicious spam, and more.

Visit their site at www.getsafeonline.org today. Stay safe.

See the details here >>>

However, the industry has acted quickly to shut down the threat with rapid updates from Mozilla, Google (and Smoothwall).

Lots of in-depth coverage here >>>

theregister.co.uk

• Adult: content containing sexually explicit images, video or text, the depiction of actual or realistic sexual activity
• Violence: content containing graphically violent images, video or text
• Race hate material: content which promotes violence or attack on individuals or institutions on the basis of religious, racial or gender grounds
• Illegal drug taking and the promotion of illegal drug use: content relating to the use or promotion of illegal drugs or misuse of prescription drugs
• Criminal skill/activity: content relating to the promotion of criminal and other activities
• Gambling: content relating to the use of online gambling websites or information relating to the promotion of gambling and gambling advice. Changes requests to the filtered content
• The must be a mechanism for an authorised member of a customer organisation to request amendments to the web content filtering service
• The appropriate procedures must be in place to authenticate personnel that request changes to any part of the service. Security and virus protection

• External malicious attacks
• Viruses and trojans
• Denial of service attacks
• Email bombs and spam Support requirements
• Support must be available through two channels: telephone and e-support (e-support includes email and or web based contact methods)
• All support requests must be acknowledged within two working hours and assigned a unique reference number
• A first attempt to resolve the support request takes place within the first four hours

Read more and comment here

The data presented in this News Release have been collected from the survey on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage in households and by individuals in the EU27, mainly carried out in the second quarter of 2010. More data on internet security and related topics can be found in the dedicated section on Information Society on the Eurostat website3.

3% of internet users suffered financial loss

In the EU27 in 2010, almost one third of individuals (31%) who used the internet in the 12 months prior to the survey reported that they caught a virus or other computer infection4 resulting in loss of information or time during this period. The highest shares of internet users who caught a virus or other computer infection were found in Bulgaria (58%), Malta (50%), Slovakia (47%), Hungary (46%) and Italy (45%), and the lowest in Austria (14%), Ireland (15%), Finland (20%) and Germany (22%).

Among the individuals in the EU27 who used the internet in the last 12 months, 4% reported that they suffered from an abuse of personal information sent on the internet and/or other privacy violations4 in this period, with the highest shares in Bulgaria and Spain (both 7%), Italy and the Netherlands (both 6%). In the same period, 3% of internet users in the EU27 suffered financial loss due to phishing or pharming attacks or fraudulent payment card use4, with the highest shares recorded in Latvia (8%), the United Kingdom (7%), Malta and Austria (both 5%).

In 2010 in the EU27, a large majority of individuals (84%) who used the internet in the last 12 months stated that they used an IT security software or tool4 to protect their private computer and data. Among the Member States, more than 90% of internet users in the Netherlands (96%), Luxembourg, Malta and Finland (all 91%) used IT security software, while it was less than two-thirds in Latvia (62%), Romania (64%) and Estonia (65%).

Use of parental control software remains limited

In 2010, 14% of individuals in the EU27 who used the internet in the last 12 months and live in a household with children had a parental control or web filtering software4 installed. This share was highest in Luxembourg and Slovenia (both 25%), followed by France (24%), Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom (all 21%) and Finland (20%).

Of the individuals in the EU27 who used the internet in the last 12 months and live in a household with children, 5% reported that they experienced children accessing inappropriate websites or connecting with potentially dangerous persons4 while using a computer within the household. The highest shares were recorded in Italy (11%) and Latvia (9%). It should be noted that this indicator only represents the share of individuals who became aware of this problem and thus it may underestimate the real figure.