## 1 Introduction  
Social networking has been defined as \"a web based service that allows individuals to: (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system; (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection; and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site\" [1].  
The use of social networking sites (SNS) has burgeoned during the past decade with Facebook, ranked the second most visited web site in the world, now boasting over 840 million profiles who connect to 'friends'. We use the term profile as opposed to user as there is some consternation about the numbers of purported users. Other popular social networking sites include MySpace, Bebo and Twitter. The rapid growth of SNS technologies along with the huge amount of information that has been posted over recent years causes a number of problems associated with _Big Data_, which for the purposes of this paper is defined as unstructured data in excess of one terabyte ([[http://www.scmagazineuk.com/survey-finds-lack-of-understanding-of-big-data-or-how-to-manage-it/article/229028/](http://www.scmagazineuk.com/survey-finds-lack-of-understanding-of-big-data-or-how-to-manage-it/article/229028/)]([http://www.scmagazineuk.com/survey-finds-lack-of-understanding-of-big-data-or-how-to-manage-it/article/229028/](http://www.scmagazineuk.com/survey-finds-lack-of-understanding-of-big-data-or-how-to-manage-it/article/229028/))  
?DCMP=EMC-SCUK_Newswire accessed on 24 February 2012). Problems include capture, storage, visualization and analytics (sensemaking), searching, sharing and information security.  
As well as public SNS systems, a number of group specific networking sites have also been established with some success. Milsuite, a suite of secure social networking tools, is one such group specific site. Created in October 2009, Milsuite includes MilBook, MilWiki, MilBlog and MilTube (launched October 2010). Designed as a secure Military social network where military personnel, civilians and contractors can share information and knowledge, the suite has been somewhat successful in that it recorded 85,000\(+\) users. An overview of the thinking behind the design of MilSuite can be found at [[http://markkovacevich.blogspot.com/2010/01/milsuite-military.html](http://markkovacevich.blogspot.com/2010/01/milsuite-military.html)]([http://markkovacevich.blogspot.com/2010/01/milsuite-military.html](http://markkovacevich.blogspot.com/2010/01/milsuite-military.html)). Hosted on the Marine Corps Enterprise Network, MilSuite has been developed by the Communications-Electronics Research and Development Centre of RDECOM but is not intended for use by family and friends of military personnel.  
In this paper we concentrate on user habits within publicly available social networking sites, as well as the tools, apps and metadata available and how these may represent significant security issues.  
Typical uses of social networking sites (SNS) include: real-time chatting with friends and family, posting of personal information and details of personal events, sharing of interests and personal photographs, posting of biographical details and affiliations including political and religious views, as well as the sharing of contact information-sometimes not their own and without the third party's consent. We will outline how these seemingly innocent user habits may pose significant personal, national and international security threats and detail occasions where operational security has been compromised and classified information posted freely on SNS.  
Following the identification and discussion of the potential security threats, we present an architecture that integrates existing popular social networking solutions, that offers significant security threat alleviation, without adversely affecting the privacy, integrity or security of the end user.