Thursday, January 8, 2009

Re: Facebook question

Hi,
It seems to me that there are simply inherent risks to being online, social
media or otherwise. IMHO, I don't think it is practical to try to completely
sanitize school networks or computers. But first, this isn't a polemic about
control vs. freedom--I am not sure that's the right way to frame the issue.
I do think you get better, more sustainable results incorporating
'safe-tech' education into the day-to-day teaching & learning process.

Should we try to mitigate risks of intrusions or a security breech?
Absolutely, harden your mission critical servers and data-centers, deploy
anti-security software and have protocols to deal with these risks. That
said, I am suspicious that blocking content actually leads to the promotion
of long term good internet citizenship.

On a practical note, I have become a big fan of google's enterprise software
since their introduction of anti-virus/spam protection via Postini.
Intercepting viruses in the cloud, now that's progress. And no, I don't work
for Google.

Cheers

>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "open facebook connection". Any attempt to
> hijack the source port of the computer making the HTTP connection would
> require the web server itself to be compromised, not the web page being
> viewed.
>
> I hear these sort of generalized fears often from people who don't fully
> understand the technology being used. Social networking is safe as long as
> you're running in a sane environment. I tend to agree with Jason, in that
> the true cost of allowing social networking and other such sites at schools
> lies in the toll taken on the supporting infrastructure.
>
>

--
Ernest Y. Koe
http://edsocialmedia.com
The Proof Group LLC
http://twitter.com/ernestkoe

[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L