Social networking has exploded. With sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, information is disseminated quickly and globally. While on one hand, this is a breakthrough in marketing and communications, there are hidden dangers for employers.

             Recent research from Proofpoint, a provider of email security and data loss prevention solutions, reveals that some 17 percent of US companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive, or private information via a posting to a social networking site in the past 12 months; 10 percent have disciplined an employee for violating social networking policies in the past 12 months and 8 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation. Additionally, 45 percent are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via posts to social networking sites and two-thirds of US companies responding to the survey reported having a formal acceptable use policy for social networking.