Online Social Media Networking and Assessing Its Security Risks

Over the past several years, we have seen the emergence of new paradigm in the Internet, online social media networking, which provide Internet users to communicate and collaborate with family, friends, social groups, and other community by using social media tools (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube). The use of social media for communication is becoming more prevalent worldwide, with people from countries of varying economic development increasingly accessing the Internet to participate in networking sites. Online social media networking today is a great tool to meet and network with people sharing similar business interests. However, they can also pose serious security threats to users and their organizations. This paper presents the security risks of online social media networking and then attempts to develop the model for assessing its security risks. Our model can help security professionals for assessing security risks in the existing information systems and designing new security systems of enterprise.