Tech-savvy employees can be a great boon to an enterprise, but they can create some daunting challenges for the IT department when they use personal devices or social networking sites on the job. Health insurer Cigna does not allow employees to use personal devices at work, but it is making substantial use of social media, according to Craig Shumard, chief information security officer. In an interview with FierceCIO, Shumard discusses the business value of social media as well as the security challenges it presents.

Cigna is rather permissive when it comes to social media--to a point. "We allow all employees to be on Facebook during the day as well as on LinkedIn and Twitter. We are in a highly regulated industry and we have fairly stringent regulatory requirements," Shumard says."We have a social media policy and it applies to those sites, as well as to blogs that people may contribute to. The key is to understand the purpose of the tools. You don't want people being your corporate spokespeople if that's not their job. Basically the watchword around the policy is about the use of those tools and not using them to reveal Cigna data or represent yourself as Cigna personnel when you're using the tools personally."

Clearly, Shumard is concerned about the security of data on social networks. "Facebook does have a webmail feature embedded into it, and we want to make sure there isn't any data leakage. We want to make sure that through some level of wandering there isn't a mention of Cigna in an inappropriate way on those sites." he says.

To prevent data leakage, Cigna employs several security monitoring products, some encryption and a lot of training. "We have a pretty robust training process around security and privacy. There's training that all employees get, and there's focused training based on specific user groups and specific requirements. We offer webinar activity that people can register for. There is a measure to determine how much they've garnered from the training," Shumard says.

Rather than seeing a drop-off in productivity from allowing employees to use social media, Shumard has noticed a happier workforce. "I think it's had a very positive impact for morale overall. As you merge the work/life environments and the lines blur between the two, it is one more tool to give employees," he says. "To a certain extent, it makes them more productive. It makes their lives easier."

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