Internet

While tech-giddy employees are prone to fawn over every new iThing smuggled into the workplace—devices that are often used in violation of company policy—IT security pros see something very different: a security breach waiting to happen. The hard fact is that many of those unauthorized devices can slash gaping holes in company security systems in a nanosecond, exposing company data and applications to hackers. Indeed, even some authorized devices keep security IT up at night, since their current software solution may not be designed to handle some of the brand-new phones and tablets.

While the Internet’s white hats have done a great job of keeping the medium’s darker forces at bay, security experts predict that the web will still remain a dangerous place for businesses in the coming year—especially those without digital smarts.

Given that Facebook has become critical to any serious social media strategy, it’s no surprise that a number of tools, software packages and apps have sprung up to give businesses a leg up on maximizing their marketing campaigns on the service. Here’s a sampling of some of the most promising:

While Google+ boasts 40 million members, it’s still relatively small for a social network. Nonetheless, many businesses have wasted no time scrambling to set up their own pages there. Search-engine optimization (SEO) experts say that the land grab is a smart move, since businesses with a presence on Google+ are expected to move up higher on Google search-engine returns.

As significant numbers of businesses migrate to outside-the-enterprise services, such as cloud computing and social media, legal experts say they should consult with their attorneys to ensure that far-flung data is protected, trackable and accessible. Indeed, data generated by cloud computing is especially rife with risk, given that data is stored offsite and under the control of a third-party vendor— a vendor who may not be as awestruck over the importance of a company’s crown data jewels as its officers are.

Marketers looking for an extremely robust tool to monitor social media should take a close look at offerings from Crimson Hexagon, evolve24 and NetBase, according to market research firm Forrester, a company with a longstanding reputation for objective market analysis. All three social media dashboards “excel in their data processing abilities,” said Zach Hofer-Shall, a Forrester analyst.

New free tools from Google, Bing and Twitter are making it virtually effortless for companies to solicit a positive review from a satisfied customer and then instantly redistribute that review to the customer’s online social circles. The technology—essentially a recommendation button that is clicked to indicate an endorsement—can be added to any company webpage or product page in a matter of seconds.

Google has turned more than a few heads in the business community by rolling out a new, free service that promises to dramatically speed the download of websites. The technology, called Page Speed Service, works by fetching content from your web-hosting service, rewriting pages using optimization techniques and then rebroadcasting the pages directly to your website visitors using Google computers.

Made in the U.S.A.” has long been a powerful marketing proposition, especially for the automotive specialty-equipment market. Resurgent patriotism and concern over American job losses, along with outsourcing and foreign knockoffs, are currently inspiring consumers to “buy American.” Of course, there are plenty of manufacturers in this industry who, for numerous reasons, never left the good ol’ U.S.A. Has their decision to remain stateside helped or hindered them?

Auto parts businesses with a demographic that skews toward the young and techno-lusty may want to check out some interesting marketing opportunities offered by free GPS-driven social networks, including Foursquare. Once seen as a quirky way to use a cell phone to broadcast the user’s precise location to friends, complete strangers and/or local merchants, foursquare is being embraced as a serious marketing tool these days by hundreds of thousands of businesses and organizations.