Dear Customer,

Welcome to the GSS monthly update of news, views and advice surrounding today’s top IT security issues. 

In some respects, the year hasn’t started well.  Floods, financial woe and increasing reports of data loss makes you wonder what else is in store.  In fact, the recent reports have had you asking for advice in this month’s reader Q&A.  As a result you can read some simple steps to stay on the right side of data protection requirements below.

But in an effort to lighten all the new year doom and gloom, this month we have included a ‘Guess Who’ competition in the Newsletter.  For your chance to win a bottle of champagne just guess the topical character and email in your answer.

Also, December’s ‘Who’s using Facebook’ article, and last month’s response to the piece in the reader Q&A, is continuing to draw much interest from you.  It is an obvious concern of our readers and was so popular we decided to conduct our own research in conjunction with Infosecurity Europe.  (You may have seen the research reported recently in the trade and national press.)  We wanted to gauge the threat social networking sites pose to productivity.  Read the interesting results below.

As always, thank you for all your feedback and suggestions, please keep them coming and email me with any comments.

David Hobson
Managing Director

7 steps to stay on the right side of data protection

This month Graham from London asked David for some top tips surrounding Data Protection.  "I am constantly reading articles surrounding high profile privacy breaches, caused by incidents such as un-encrypted CDs or the inappropriate disposal of paper.  Are there some simple steps we can take to ensure we stay on the right side of data protection?"

Read David's 7 Steps

If you've got a question you'd like to put to the experts, send it to emaildavid@gss.co.uk

Websense Roadmap Seminar

With their acquisition of SurfControl at the end of 2007, GSS are hosting a free seminar, in conjunction with Websense.  The seminar is ideal for those who want to hear the future plans for both Websense and SurfControl in 2008, and beyond.

The half-day seminar will be held on 19th February  2008 in London.  The Roadmap will be presented by Pat Dunne, the Websense UK & Ireland Senior Regional Director and in addition, there will be presentations from two companies offering complementary solutions: Safend and NETconsent.

Find out more

Facebook costs UK Billions

With the increasing use of networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo a major concern to UK businesses, we decided to conduct a poll in conjunction with Infosecurity Europe 2008.

We discovered these sites are costing UK corporations close to £6.5 billion annually in lost productivity.  The poll was carried out amongst 776 office workers, who admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social networking sites whilst at work.

Read more

Managing your software assets with GSS

In today's business world, software and applications are playing a critical role.  But the never ending cycle of updates, new releases and easy availability can place an organisation at risk.  Software Asset Management (SAM) protects your organisation from these risks and helps you recognise what you've got, where it's running and how best to utilise it.

GSS are here to help and can easily implement SAM in your organisation.  Approaching SAM at a business level, we have the skills and knowledge to provide expert advice and solutions for all aspects of software asset management.

Find out how we can help with SAM

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Endpoint Security with Safend

The proliferation of products using USB, WiFi, Bluetooth & other protocols makes it easy to connect unauthorised external devices to enterprise PCs. This poses two distinct security threats to your organisation: information leakage and targeted attacks.

Safend’s endpoint security solutions enable organisations to securely enjoy the advantages of mobile computing.  Allowing you to enhance productivity without sacrificing data security.  Safend has also partnered with Websense to offer the add-on Interface for Content Inspection, a content-aware network and endpoint ILP solution.  Find out more at our Websense Roadmap Seminars.

Read more about Safend products