Google Sites - the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Today’s announcement of the release of Google Sites is something that we suspect will be very good for Google. Whilst Google Apps without Google Sites is a solid offering, it was missing the foundation stone for collaboration. In traditional IT environments it used to be the shared network drive and email, but is now the enterprise wiki, intranet or other knowledge management system. In the SaaS space, the collaboration foundation stone is services like Google Sites.
So what does Google Sites deliver? Mainly the ability for people within an organisation to publish their work in framework that lets others use that work to solve problems. Using a piece of knowledge management theory, Google Apps (without Google Sites) helps to turn data into information and Google Sites helps to turn information into knowledge.
Ok, so why does a company that does Internet security care about that?
Knowledge management theory says that in the data -> information -> knowledge value chain, knowledge is the most valuable. We have been expecting phishers to start to target Google Apps for a while now, which is why we introduced Nedu for Google Apps. And so far, we haven’t seen the amount of nefarious activity we expected. But we think that the introduction of Google Sites could be the catalyst that draws the attention of the bad guys.
And we think this because Google Sites helps to turn information into knowledge thus bumping up the value of credentials that are needed to harvest that knowledge. The economics of phishing say that as soon as the revenue that can be generated from credentials significantly exceeds the cost of getting those credentials, you will see attacks occur.
We think that Google Sites will significantly increase the value of Google Apps data. Obviously so does Google, otherwise they wouldn’t have bought JotSpot and integrated it as Google Sites. This is good news for Google Apps users, but also an expansion of the market for phishers.
The challenge with all collaboration technology is to gain the benefits of being open, whilst managing the risks associated with it. That is how you generate ROI on your new collaboration investments, and that is what we’re here to help with.