WorkBook Brings Facebook Inside the Firewall
December 20th, 2007 (8:30am) Anne Zelenka 2 CommentsTweet This
While many employers ban Facebook, others are looking for ways to incorporate it into their businesses in a way that maintains security and productivity. That’s because social networking isn’t just about poking people; you can use it to work more effectively too.
Now there’s a way to use Facebook inside the firewall without compromising security: WorkBook from WorkLight, a “secure enterprise overlay for Facebook” that sits inside the firewall and creates a company-specific version of the Facebook UI.
One main concern employers have with Facebook inside company walls is security, but WorkLight has an answer, says Andrew McAfee, who saw a demo of WorkBook: “the data populating each of these [standard Facebook features] were specific to Lavendaco, came from the WorkLight server installed at Lavendaco, were encrypted as they travelled across the Internet, and did not pass through Facebook servers.”
The main WorkLight offering takes corporate data such as from enterprise resource planning applications and presents it Web 2.0 style, for example as RSS feeds or in desktop and web-based gadgets.
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I think employers can embrace Facebook by using it as a retention/recruiting tool. One company I recently wrote about has something called ‘Facebook Fridays’.
http://jobsinpods.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/facebook-fridays/
My employer used to have something like Facebook inside the firewalls. For some reason the project was killed and now Facebook itself is blocked.