CYBERSECURITY—SOCIAL MEDIA
Attacks underscore the limits of Twitter, Facebook
It is tempting to dismiss the recent denial-of-service attacks against Twitter and Facebook as trivial. If you were badly inconvenienced by the unavailability of these services, the best advice might be to just get a life and learn to live without a stream of instant updates on the lives of practical strangers.
But these applications also are creeping into the enterprise as business tools being used for information sharing and public outreach. This is all well and good, but the recent interruptions should serve as a reminder that these tools are not yet ready for mission-critical tasks. As an additional channel for getting information before the public or communicating with a community of shared interests, they have value. And they doubtless will evolve to become more robust and useful. But they probably should not be depended on today for important tasks.
About the Author
William Jackson is a senior writer of GCN and the author of the CyberEye column.