Q: What exactly is Facebook at Work and where can I try it out?
A: Inter-company communication is one of the most important technology initiatives that any organization has to take on, and Facebook wants to get in on the action.
Most companies rely on email or basic instant messaging for daily contact, but the complexity of business communications continue to expand, so many are finding them pretty inefficient.
Companies are also concerned about security. The most likely way your company will be exploited these days is through email. And sophisticated social engineering attacks (aka spear phishing) can look like an email from a colleague or administrator, which can fool many employees into opening dangerous attachments or clicking on rigged links.
Everyone knows that opening file attachments is dangerous, but when they come from fellow employees or executives in your company, you probably won’t think twice about opening them.
As long as email is a primary internal communication tool, it will be up to each employee to tell fake messages from legitimate ones. Malicious attackers know that they only need to get one employee to fall for their scam in order to perpetrate ransomware scams, or to get behind firewalls or other security measures.
The social nature of companies these days makes it really easy for scammers to figure out who the important figures are, and then to create very convincing messages.
The scams can range from sending a message that appears to be from the CEO telling an accounting employee to send a wire transfer to an announcement from a company executive that the company is being acquired and that the details are in the attached document.
Lots of companies are attempting to address these problems, including a popular startup called Slack, which has generated more than a million users in just over two years. But such powerful platforms require a lot of training and behavioral changes of employees, which can make transitioning a bit of a headache.
Just about everyone has a Facebook account, and many are already using it every day at work anyway, so leveraging what’s already in place could be effective.
Facebook launched a closed beta test of the Facebook at Work platform earlier this year with a small group of companies, and most estimates are pointing to a public release in early 2016.
Facebook at Work accounts are separate from your personal accounts, so they keep personal and business posts separate. Anything posted via the Facebook at Work account is only visible to others in your company — think of it as a controlled internal social network.
The current features include profiles, events, groups, files and notifications, which closely mirrors what Facebook already offers.
If this platform proves effective and truly secure, you could effectively eliminate the threat of fake internal email messages and file attachments because everyone in your organization would know not to trust any email message that claimed to be from a co-worker.
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Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. Ask any tech question at: https://facebook.com/DataDoctors or on Twitter @TheDataDoc.
