The economy stinks but it's all roses for online community growth

The economy is in dire straits, nobody has budget for training or travel anymore, and online community sites are reaping the rewards. People are jumping onto these sites for all sorts of reasons like to find jobs and social network, to learn new skills, and to keep up with the latest buzz to name but a few. Large companies like Cisco are starting to make their presence known in these extremely popular communities. These Cisco communities are a great way to keep up with the latest Cisco security news, ask questions of experts, get free training, discuss security topics, and socialize with your network security peers.

I have compiled a list of the online community sites that I am aware of. If you know of some others please post them.

Let’s get the oldest and most established one in the books first. It is of course Cisco Netpro Forums. http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=Security_discussion. Great place to ask questions, find answers, and learn about new features and products from Cisco. Also great for getting study tips for Cisco certifications.

Facebook is the largest online social network so it is no surprise that Cisco now has a facebook security page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cisco-SystemsR-Security/37472752215
Facebook is the largest social network in the world with 132 million unique visitors per month. It is also the fastest growing according to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent between 2007-2008. This compares to a lackluster 3 percent growth for MySpace during the same period. Given this kind of growth, expect to see even more corporate presence on Facebook.

Twitter is raging across the Internet like a wildfire in July. To add some fuel to the inferno Cisco started up a Security focused twitter site.
http://twitter.com/CiscoSecurity

YouTube can be absolutely addicting. Seems like every time I visit their site I get sucked in to watching a string of time wasting vids, ah but it is fun. Cisco has a general, non security specific site here http://www.youtube.com/CSCOPR but my current favorite video is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REQRHdMRimw

Last but not least, Cisco has its own blog site, unfortunately there is not one specific to security. Come on guys! However, if you do a search for security you will dig up some items. You can find the various blogs here http://blogs.cisco.com


Well that about does it for the ones I know about. Feel free to post any other Cisco security focused blogs or community pages that you follow.

The opinions and information presented here are my personal views and not those of my employer.

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Go to Jamey’s Blog for more articles on security.

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