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Playing 'FarmVille' at Work Poses Security Risks, Cisco Study Claims

by Caleb Johnson on July 28, 2010 at 08:20 AM

FarmVille Screencap
In a security report, Cisco claims that employees are breaking company policies by playing social networking games, and, by doing so, could be opening up networks to outside attacks. Cisco's 2010 Midyear Report found that 7-percent of those who admitted to using Facebook at work also fessed up to spending an average of 68 minutes each day playing 'FarmVille.' FarmVille isn't the only culprit; they also waste plenty of time playing 'Mafia Wars' (5-percent for 52 minutes each day) and 'Cafe World' (4-percent for 36 minutes each day). Aside from those effects on work productivity, Cisco also discovered that cybercriminals are working on ways to deliver malware via these games and applications. While no specific games were named, it makes sense that the most popular ones (i.e. 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars') would be targeted.

So if there weren't reasons enough for you to quit playing 'FarmVille,' you can kick this addiction for the good of your company's security. But, then again, as proven by this report, management can't simply rely on its loyal workers to, you know, actually work instead of tending crops or harvesting party pigs, so explanations will be doubly deserved when the boss wants to know how exactly the servers got so badly infected. [From: Mashable and Network World]

Tags: CafeWorld, Cisco, facebook, FarmVille, MafiaWars, report, security, SocialNetworking, top, Web

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