Mabus trying to find value in Twitter and Facebook for Navy
Although Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are now officially off-limits for Marines at work, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus hopes the department can find a way to allow access to those sites and others like them while maintaining vital network security.
Sailors still have access to most of the sites through Navy computers.
An Aug. 3 Marine message called the social networking sites “a proven haven for malicious actors and content,” and officially prohibited Marines from accessing them from work computers unless a waiver is granted. Just three days after the message was released, Twitter was hacked and shut down for a few hours, illustrating how susceptible such sites are to attack.
“The very nature of (social networking sites) creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage,” officials said in the message.
The ban does not apply to Marines’ personal accounts accessed from home computers, or at Internet cafes and USO computer terminals in war zones.
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8/11/9
