McAfee Releases Report on Web 2.0 Technology Adoption at Workplace

McAfee released a new report titled 'Web 2.0: A Complex Balancing Act' in collaboration with Purdue University's CERIAS research group. The report highlights the use, benefits and perceived risks of Web 2.0 technologies' adoption at the Indian workplace and presents the corresponding security concerns that organizations face today. It also states that the most significant consequences from inappropriate social media usage are loss of reputation, brand, or client confidence.

The survey was conducted amongst more than 1,000 organizational decision-makers in 17 countries and shows high adoption of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. More than 75 percent of organizations reported using Web 2.0 solutions for many business functions. Web 2.0 adoption is lowest in the United States and the Commonwealth countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. While adoption rates vary across countries, India along with Brazil and Spain, leads the adoption of Web 2.0 technology for business activities.

Key Report Findings

--Web 2.0 adoption rates are high, reaching 90 percent or above in Brazil, Spain and India. India is ranked second amongst seventeen counties polled in this report: Primary reason for adopting Web 2.0: to create new revenue streams, 78% of respondents from India attributed market drivers such as customers and partners as the primary reason for Web 2.0 adoption.

--Indian firms ranked in the middle regarding use of social media policies despite ranking first amongst the countries that view Web 2.0 usage as threatening: 11% of organizations surveyed in India did not have a social media policy

--New revenue streams emerged as the highest driver of Web 2.0 adoption. Sixty-eight percent of organizations that use Web 2.0 report that expanded use of Web 2.0 technologies could create new revenue streams for their organizations.

--Security is the second leading concern for Web 2.0 technologies: One third of the respondents name security risks as their primary concern with Web 2.0 and the reason Web 2.0 technologies are not used more widely in business.

--Indian employers are more likely to trust their employees with Web 2.0 than countries such as UK, Australia , France and Spain.

Six out of 10 organizations have had at least one type of security incident and countries such as India, with the highest adoption rates were more likely to have multiple incidents and report larger losses: 5% of mid-sized organizations reported that they had suffered a data loss that had cost them more than $25,000. Of these 25% were from China, 14% from France and 11% from India.

Organizations in India and Brazil, which have seen high losses from security incidents, are most likely to budget for Web 2.0-specific security solutions: Three quarters of Indian organizations and more than half of Brazilian organizations do so.

Executives and industry experts, who contributed to the research, agreed that successful organizational use of Web 2.0 is a complex balancing act. Enterprises must analyze business challenges and opportunities while mitigating the risks, and ensure that staff training and robust technologies are in place to avoid cyber attacks.