Is Facebook a major social engineering threat?

If it hasn't hit the news where you live yet, then it should soon enough. Using Facebook, an 18-year-old male student managed to social engineer at least 31 male classmates into sending nude pictures of themselves to him. Inevitably, many became victims of blackmail.

While the entire crime looks like an open-and-shut case, where better parental supervision of Internet access is concerned, I cannot help but link it to social engineering in the enterprise. As employees increasingly network via a proliferation of social networking sites, it is inevitable that once private or at least relatively unknown facts about oneself are now easily obtainable via the Internet.

Coupled with the latest updates via micro-blogging sites such Twitter, it isn't hard to imagine how social engineers might have their work cut out for them as they work to convince your IT support--while you are on holiday perhaps--that you need to urgently access your email from abroad and have forgotten the password. Do you have any suggestions on the steps that enterprises can take to avert certain disaster on this front?

In closing, I wanted to pass along the exciting news that our family of publications will be launching FierceGovernmentIT this Monday. So be sure to check out the website next week and subscribe to FierceGovernmentIT for free if this is a subject that interests you.

Till next week! - Paul