Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) revealed a $450 million investment in Facebook last week, and yet the investment giant still blocks its employees from using the social networking site. Goldman Sachs is in very good company when it comes to resisting social media in the workplace (most companies reportedly remain reluctant), but analysts, pundits and consultants of all stripes continue to press companies to embrace it.

In a post pointedly titled "Social Media Resistance: Sustain or Surrender in 2011," Kristin Burnham at CIO magazine takes a jab at Goldman Sachs for its continued blockade against Facebook even after the big investment. "If an employee tries to access the site, a browser message appears that says, 'Access to this site is logged and audited,' and that Internet use on the premises is only for 'legitimate business.'" Burnham writes. "Which is a little ironic coming from a company that just fueled Facebook with millions, dontcha think?"

I don't think it's ironic, no. Investment firms fund any variety of products and services that they do not necessarily want their employees to partake of at the office. It has to be noted that Burnham is far from alone in taking Goldman Sachs and other companies to task for not having a Twitter account or Facebook page (in 2011!) and for keeping their workers off the sites. It seems to be a fashionable pastime, pitting popular, consumer-oriented, often little-tested technologies against businesses that have very good reasons to move slowly on developments with uncertain risks.

The privacy and security risks inherent in setting a company's workforce loose on social networks cannot be ignored by IT executives. In December, McAfee Labs cited Facebook and Twitter by name in warning that social media sites will be "riddled with cybercriminal activity," including spam, scamming and other malicious activity. "The use of abbreviated URLs on sites like Twitter makes it easy for cybercriminals to mask and direct users to malicious websites," McAfee warned. 

Companies--and most particularly financial companies and others in highly regulated industries--are obligated to ensure the security of their data. If there are any truly important lessons to be learned in the last couple years, they can be seen in the frighteningly high number of breaches and leaks.

And then there is the matter of social media's impact on productivity, which is something Goldman Sachs apparently knows something about. In March 2007, TechCrunch reported that Goldman Sachs warned one of its traders to stop spending so much time on Facebook after he was allegedly found to be there an average of four hours a day. Here's the clincher: The first thing the trader then did was post the warning on his Facebook page.

I like the headline on Burnham's post because "surrender" is truly what some IT executives may find themselves doing this year--surrendering to the tide, against their better judgment. - Caron