Porsche Is Getting Unsocial

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

If you work at Porsche, you get a sweetheart deal on a 911 or whatever your heart desires. But it comes at a steep price: You will not be able to use Facebook, or any other social networks. Blocked by Porsche’s firewall. About 25 percent of the nearly 13,000 Porsche employees used to use social networks (that sounds like just about everybody at the office) – no more. Aus. Vorbei. HTTP Error 401.

According to German magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Porsche is – supposedly – concerned about espionage. Rainer Benne, head of security at Porsche, is worried that information will seep outside. According to the security experts, foreign intelligence services are mining Facebook systematically, are chatting up insiders and steal secrets via good old social engineering.

Says the magazine: “As the employees can visit Facebook after work, it will hardly avert danger.”

But it will raise productivity.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Buster Brew Buster Brew on Oct 11, 2010

    The Jobs, the network and the hardware all belong to Porsche... I'd say they get to make the rules.

  • Jmhm2003 Jmhm2003 on Oct 11, 2010

    VPN for the people. If you want out of your restrictive corporate network just dig a tunnel.

    • PeregrineFalcon PeregrineFalcon on Oct 12, 2010

      Right, because we totally didn't think of that, and outbound RDP/SSH doesn't fire off an alert immediately so that we start screen-scraping your workstation. That's cute. Just use a phone with a data plan if you're that desperate to post about how many brewskies you had last night, creep on your ex, or play FarmVille.

  • M 1 M 1 on Oct 12, 2010

    So? It isn't like information security is a surprising new problem in the car business.

  • Stingray Stingray on Oct 12, 2010

    Facebook got locked at job last year, when the last virus attacked. And with it twitter, youtube... Barely news at all, I guessed it was locked, and surprises me that big companies allow that crap in their networks. Now if they forbid use of that crap in their free time is another matter.

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