Nearly two-thirds of businesses have pinpointed social networking giant Facebook as the biggest threat to their security, according to a new report from IT security firm Sophos.
The firm quizzed 500 businesses of varying sizes on where they felt the greatest dangers to their security lay, with 60 per cent putting Facebook at the top of the list.
"Facebook is by far the largest social network and you'll find more bad apples in the biggest orchard," Sophos' Graham Cluley wrote on the Sophos blog.
Fellow social networking site MySpace was voted second with 18 per cent, closely followed by Twitter (17 per cent).
With in excess of 350 million users, Facebook represents a potential goldmine of personal information, said Cluley one that hackers are constantly trying to infiltrate.
"Computer users are spending more time on social networks, sharing sensitive and valuable personal information, and hackers have sniffed out where the money is to be made," Cluley said.
"Social networks and their millions of users have to do more to protect themselves from organised cybercrime, or risk falling prey to identity theft schemes, scams, and malware attacks."
Cluley was critical of Facebook's recent settings reshuffle that was seen as indirectly encouraging users to make as much personal information publicly available as possible, calling it "a backwards step".
Facebook recently announced a collaboration with security software maker
McAfee to offer its members a free six-month subscription to McAfee's services and software and discounted rates thereafter.
"If we get people's machines this protection, it is better for them, for Facebook, and the internet as a whole," Facebook's director of communications Barry Schnitt commented at the time.
The Sophos Security Threat 2010 report also detailed a 70 per cent rise in the number of social network users who had received spam with more than half now confirming they had come across spam in their Facebook emails.
On top of that, one in three said they had been sent worms, viruses or other malware also a 70 per cent jump from last year's figures.
However, despite the increased threat, half of the businesses questioned said they gave employees full and unfettered access to Facebook a 13 per cent rise on 12 months earlier.
"The grim irony is that just as companies are loosening their attitude to staff activity on social networks, the threat of malware, spam, phishing and identity theft on Facebook is increasing," said Cluley.
In its own report earlier this month, McAfee said it expected cyber-criminals to increasingly target the likes of Facebook and Twitter this year.
"We're now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications and more advanced techniques used by cyber criminals," McAfee senior vice-president Jeff Green said.
