Panda Security Publishes Social Media Risk Index

The next time you see a link for "hawt bizness tipz" (or even something much less questionable) posted on a social network, think twice before clicking it.  A new study from Panda Security indicates that social networks are a major source of malware that affects small businesses.

Panda’s study involved 315 small and mid-sized businesses, and the company explained in a statement that it found that "33 percent of these companies had experienced a malware or virus infection from social networks."

That’s not good, since even the least annoying bugs around tend to affect a computer’s performance.  But to make matters worse, "[T]hirty-five percent of survey respondents that were infected by malware from social networking sites suffered a financial loss, with more than a third of those companies reporting losses in excess of $5,000."

So again, be careful what you click, especially on Facebook (which was the biggest source of malware infections).  Watch out for links on YouTube, too, since Panda found it to be the second-biggest source of infections.

Employees should also be briefed about these threats, of course, and while we can’t recommend it, business owners might consider limiting access to social media sites.

Just try not to abandon sites like Facebook and Twitter since they remain valuable resources in many ways.