Harvard PR has been handed a major thought leadership brief by security company, Websense. The agency is tasked to mount an aggressive educational PR campaign to raise awareness of the growing security threats posed to businesses by new technologies, including web 2.0 technologies and by 'information leakage'.
"Security threats continue to be one of the top IT fears - and the rise of internet shopping and banking, instant messaging, social networking and peer-to-peer networks has made IT security even more vital to UK plc," explains Harvard Managing Director, Chris Cartwright.
Recent research commissioned by Websense revealed that businesses throughout Europe are failing to protect themselves against today's emerging security threats. The firm's State of Security (SOS) survey highlighted the increasing use of potentially unsafe Web sites and applications by employees, coupled with a dangerous lack of understanding regarding the security threats these sites pose.
The study of 750 IT managers and general employees in companies in five European countries, found that most were not fully protected from the latest security threats. For instance, only 6% blocked dangerous content from USB devices and iPods; only 22% block peer-to-peer applications; only 30% block instant message attachments and only 31% block 'phishing' sites.
"With the Generation Y workforce increasing, there is a growing acceptance that businesses cannot prevent employees from engaging in 'Web 2.0 activities' at work, but they can be dangerous activities, even something as seemingly innocuous as instant messaging," continues Cartwright, "so organisations need to adopt new measures to combat these new security threats."
In addition to the widely-publicised threats of phishing and identity theft posed by increasing Internet usage, another major Achilles heel in a company's security is rogue data entering a computer network or sensitive information leaking out. Consequently, information leak prevention is a growing issue in corporate governance. With the potential risk to customer data, it could become a major legal issue as well.
Harvard was awarded the brief following a competitive pitch against two other companies - and the pitch process was a move away from the traditional presentation followed by questions. "We wanted to assess agencies' on-the-spot creativity and consulting skills so we set them a real-life PR challenge that Websense faces - and gave them 30 minutes to craft a response," says Websense Senior PR manager, EMEA & APAC, Rebecca Zarkos. "Harvard's grasp of our business and the strength and relevance of their ideas met our brief exactly, so we bought into them immediately."
Harvard's campaigns for Websense will centre on the IT trade press as the primary targets, while it will also seek to raise major issues within national and business media.
ENDS
About Websense
Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN), protects more than 25 million employees from external and internal computer security threats. Using a combination of preemptive ThreatSeeker(tm) malicious content identification and categorization technology and information leak prevention technology, Websense helps make computing safe and productive. Distributed through its global network of channel partners, Websense software helps organizations block malicious code, prevent the loss of confidential information and manage Internet and wireless access. For more information, visit www.websense.com.
About Harvard
Harvard Public Relations specialises in PR for clients in the TMT (Technology, Media and Telecoms) sector including Adobe, Cisco, Vodafone, Pentax, Sony and Fujitsu. The company is part of Bell Pottinger, the UK's leading public relations group.
For further information:
Chris Cartwright
Tel: 020-8564-6326
Email: chris.cartwright@harvard.co.uk
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