How to Control Corporate Facebook Access

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In keeping with my last post on cleaning up your Facebook account, today I want to talk to you about how you can regulate Facebook access across your enterprise networks. I heard a story last week about a soldier in Afghanistan who posted on his Facebook status page about the location of his next mission a few days before the actual event. Needless to say, the mission was cancelled and he was sent packing.

Your concerns might not be as life-and-death related, but just as important: do you think your employees are leaking company confidential information? Do you want to put limits on what they can do while inside Facebook, such as playing Farmville or other games? How about blocking or slowing down access during business hours, but then opening up afterwards?

I began doing some research for this topic for an article that I am writing for one of TechTarget's web sites, and found a very rich landscape that is available to enterprise IT folks. Just about every network security product has some form of control over Facebook. Some offer more granularity than others. For example, McAfee's Firewall Enterprise offers two different controls: one for the basic Facebook access, and one for all Facebook apps. That is nice. Palo Alto Networks takes it a step further, having these two plus four additional controls for chat, mail, posting updates, and any plug-ins too. That gives IT managers a lot of control over how they want their users to act. For example, you could restrict any posting until after hours, so that users could at least browse what their friends are doing, or keep the apps off the business network entirely, but still let people check their Facebook accounts.

Sonicwall and BlueCoat have products that can be used to restrict the amount of network bandwidth that Facebook is using at any given time. This doesn't block the site entirely, just slows it down enough to be annoying, so that hopefully users will go do something else rather than wait for slow page uploads. For college campuses that need to free up their business bandwidth during the day, this is a good idea.

And then there are several data loss prevention products that can dig deeper into the Facebook data stream and determine if any information is leaving a corporate network that shouldn't be - such as our army grunt's status location update. Global Velocity's product has a lot of granularity here and can be set similarly to the Palo Alto box for examining chat or apps traffic (or all Facebook data) specifically.

The trouble is that a single product doesn't do everything, and you might be using a competitor's firewall that makes it more difficult to set up these controls (I am thinking about you Cisco owners). But at least several vendors are moving in the right direction to enable these kinds of controls and at the level of detail that many of us need nowadays.

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Transition From The Corporate Office To Your Office

Aspiring entrepreneurs dream of the time when they can tell the boss "See Ya!" and start working in their PJs. Working from home is definitely a relief from the commute, stress and politics of the office. You have your freedom to call the shots and do things your own way.

But there are some important points to consider. As an entrepreneur you are also 100% responsible for everything that happens in your business. You can no longer "pass the buck" to your co-workers or inept boss as the reason a project didn't go as scheduled. If you don't see the work gets done, it won't. Also, you are responsible for every "department" in your company. Especially at first you are the Accounting Department, IT Department, Marketing Department, etc. At times, you may feel overwhelmed by wearing all the hats in your business. With thoughtful preparation, however, you can make you transition from employee to virtual assistant/owner smoother and avoid common pitfalls.

One way that you can prepare yourself for the transition from "being bossed" to becoming "The Boss" is to use your time wisely while you are still working for someone else. Do some undercover work on the best ways to set up some of your own home office systems.

Even if you hate you current job, your company is still in business because they have guidelines and procedures around getting things done. Take the time to create a list of office procedures that you would want to institute in your own home office. Start observing how managers and supervisors get things accomplished (or not). Take note of the best practices that you'd like to continue as well as the bad ones you wish to avoid.

For example, most offices make use of a computer filing system for their documents and clients records. This system allows their employees to quickly and easily retrieve information. This is one of those necessities having an organized business. If you think that they have an efficient setup, use that as your blueprint for your own file management system. And if their file management protocols are not very efficient or user friendly, make note of the problems and avoid them while you create your own.

While you are still drawing a salary take a few business classes that discuss basic bookkeeping or strengthen some of your skill sets. Becoming more involved with the local business communities such as the Chamber of Commerce, will help you develop a realistic view of what you'll need in your own business. You can join online communities such as my LinkedIn group to speak directly with established virtual assistants who will be more than happy to share their "business birthing pains" and how they got through them.

By planning ahead and setting firm goals, you can make a smoother transition. On a personal note, when I started out as a virtual assistant I learned this lesson through lots of trial and error and frustration.

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