Network security firm Palo Alto Networks has released new functionality, which it claims to enable enterprises to control Facebook Social Plug-ins, empowering users to continue to embrace Facebook while mitigating any privacy concerns.
The company said that the new default Facebook privacy settings are designed to share private and corporate information with advertisers and other third parties. New App-ID allows IT security teams to protect their Facebook users against the undesired data sharing while transparently preserving Facebook functionality and not breaking the functionality of other websites that rely on the Facebook Social Plug-ins.
Palo said that its Application and Threat Research Team researches applications and maintains App-ID and the nearly 1,000 applications it identifies, adding three to five applications weekly.
Palo Alto Networks combines technologies to provide visibility and control over Facebook-related functionality, users and content. App-ID identifies which Facebook functionality is running on the network, as well as the associated risks, while the User-ID integrates with Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP directories to link Facebook use to users and groups.
In addition, the Content-ID combines threat prevention engine with a URL database to detect and block threats, limit unauthorised transfer of files and data.
Rene Bonvanie, vice president of worldwide marketing at Palo Alto Networks, said: This is another example of the safe enablement that customers of Palo Alto Networks can uniquely take advantage of; reaping the benefit of social applications, yet mitigating the risks.
“For example, an organisation might want to enable customer service representatives to use Facebook, the chat function and the messages function, but disable Facebook Applications and Social Plug-ins to mitigate productivity and privacy concerns.
