Now Available:

line

Featured Resources:

line

Newsletter

Email Address:


line

Ask the Expert

Have a question for our resident expert? Email your questions to Rebecca.

« Deloitte Survey Shows the Need for Effective Training | Main | ISO/IEC 17799:2005 By Another Name Is Still The Same »

Trends In Allowing MP3 Downloads to Corporate Networks

I love my iPod and my iTunes. I have always liked to pick and choose the tunes I wanted to hear and not have to listen to the entire album/CD if there were some songs that I didn't care for. Plus, I like to listen to a variety of singers, all mixed together. I've created dozens of playlists for various events and activites I do. I have an eclectic taste in music which I am broadening all the time while listening to what I think is one of the top radio stations in the entire country, located right here in the Des Moines, Iowa area. Add to this the many great podcasts that continue to be churned out, and you can imagine how many weeks of total play time are stored on my computer within my MP3s.

Podcasts are great ways to increase the awareness of your personnel for privacy and security issues. They reach the audio learners in a way that print copy alone misses.

I feel so strongly about the effectiveness of podcasts for audio learners that I'm including them in my new quarterly subscription awareness resource being released in just little over a week. I will tell you more about it as the release date approaches, but my goal in doing this is to create an awareness product that truly does speak to ALL personnel at ALL levels of an organization, using terminology understandable by non-security and non-privacy folks, and incorporating my experience and background in education to use the proven concepts that must be utilized to effectively communicate to all three types of learners:

· Visual (this is typically the only group current awareness products speak to)

· Audio (those who learn best by listening to information)

· Kinesthetic (hands-on learners; those who need to do activities to learn)

However, one thing that I have thought about by including the MP3 podcast file in my package is whether or not organizations are blocking the use or download of such files on their corporate networks.

The information security and privacy practitioners I spoke with largely indicated that they *ARE* providing MP3 files directly on their network for their network users to listen to, but most had not really thought about the impacts of allowing their network users to download MP3 files from Internet sites.

Bandwidth and storage issues were the impacts that came most quickly to my mind with allowing these downloads from the Internet. But, there are more.

My new poll (see the right of the screen and scroll down) tries to determine whether the trend is for organizations oto block MP3 Internet downloads on the corporate network, or to allow them. Please click a button and let me know!

After the poll closes in a couple of weeks I will discuss the results, along with providing a list of the risks I've identified related to allowing MP3 downloads to corporate networks.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.realtime-itcompliance.com/type/mt-tb.cgi/522

Comments

Hrmm, one doesn't expect to find a new radio station on the blogs I read! I used to listen to whatever that Smooth Jazz station was a few years ago, but then overnight they turned into a hiphop/rap station...that was an interesting awakening on Monday morning! Since then I've suffered through finding nothing interesting...either music is ok and the DJs are annoying, or vice versa.

I've never heard of 106.3, but seeing the latest bunch of songs, I think I'd dig it. I'll be honest, I don't do radio except for waking up in the morning. After that, it's all ipod/xm radio

If I commuted into an outside office each day I'd probably not listen to the radio much either. However, now that I'm able to have my own home office I like to have the radio on in the background...some days the DJs are the only other human voices I hear during the work day! :)

I've found this station has little DJ talk (compared to the others locally), and I've discovered many new artists I would not have otherwise known about. I do wish they'd play a little more jazz and R&B, though...

Post a comment

(All comments are approved by site leader before appearing here. Thanks for commenting!)

line

Rebecca Herold's Bio:

Rebecca Herold,CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, has been providing information security, privacy and regulatory assistance and services to organizations from a wide range of industries for over 18 years. Rebecca was instrumental in building the information security and privacy program while at Principal Financial Group, which was awarded the CSI Information Security Program of the Year Award in 1998. IT Security ranked Rebecca as one of the top 59 IT security influencers, and Computerworld put Rebecca their list of the 25 top privacy experts and on their list of the 9 best privacy consulting firms. Rebecca has been CPO for two consulting organizations, and has had her own information privacy, security and compliance business since 2004. Rebecca has written chapters for several books, dozens of articles, and has been writing a monthly privacy column for the CSI Alert newsletter since the beginning of 2001, and is working on her 11th book. Some of her other books include The Privacy Papers, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program, The Definitive Guide to Security Inside the Perimeter (Realtime Publishers), The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL (Realtime Publishers), and The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance. In addition, Rebecca is the leader of The Realtime IT Compliance Community where she posts to her IT Compliance weblog. You can contact Rebecca at: rebecca_herold@realtimepublishers.net.