Number crunchers at Gartner have decided that businesses should allow their workers to access Facebook and all manner of web guff "securely", via the company network.

Distinguished analyst John Pescatore led the call: "Strategies to contain and protect the use of new technologies will always be more effective in the long run than security approaches that rely solely on blocking."

His colleague Joseph Feiman, who is apparently a fellow of Gartner, agreed: "Web 2.0 enables masses of individuals to become application and content developers and deploy Web 2.0 applications that implement their own versions of established business rules and practices. Although this entails risks, it can also unlock huge business value."

The accompanying report The Creative and Insecure World of Web 2.0 concludes that if businesses get hip to Facebook while investing in security, the bottom line will see the benefit.

Gartner polled 1,500 CIOs to summon the revelation. Half of them said they plan to invest in "Web 2.0 technologies", whatever they are, for the first time this year.

At the Reg we've been all about groupthink and crowd-sourcing for years, so let's hear from the BOFHs: are your users getting "secure" access to Facebook this year? ®

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