The Growing Trouble with Trust
Posted: November 4, 2011 at 5:25 am | by Joe Gottlieb
The recent news about Socialbot attacks confirm what most of us feared…that social networks are drunk with growth and not maintaining security practices commensurate with the attractiveness of their assets. At the heart of this threat, sadly, lies the human desire to trust – which has become “semi-automated” in social networks.
Social fabrics boil relationships down to simple transactions. By simply “liking” something, or “friending” someone, you create automated associations that lead to interactions – both good and bad. Social communities work on the notion of “automated trust,” and the paradigm that by taking those actions, you are prepared for all of the related consequences. What’s more: in your social environment, your guard is down (for the most part). You trust that the information you are receiving is relevant and safe (sent by a friend, or because you “liked” something).
These trust mechanisms will make it very easy for the new frontier: mass-customized cyber-crime.
Social media vendors have enjoyed the ability to serve very indulgent communities with, only recently, the concern for increased controls and security. It will be critical for these proprietors to take a continuous design improvement approach to their security practices. They will need to protect social networks with the same technology, people and process used by enterprises and government agencies, particularly large scale event collection, filtering and analysis.
It will also be their responsibility to educate users on the increasingly granular controls that are available, and enforce safe techniques in their community. I am speculating that the average participant does not fully understand or leverage the granular controls available in many online services. It’s important to determine what trust-level users want to exhibit and then recognize, outside of that sphere they create, everything else they share is available to the public.
We will be hearing more about Socialbots in 2012…
