Billions of people around the world watch today’s Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton either on TV or online from many Web sites.
While the wedding went off without a hitch, the same cannot be said for those searching for wedding details online.
Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) this morning reported that its Norton team witnessed a spike in poisonous Royal Wedding search results.
According to intelligence from the Norton security team, the following ten search terms generate malicious results:
1. Prince Harry last name
2. Princess Diana death date
3. Prince Charles Alzheimer’s
4. Prince Charles age (63)
5. Royal wedding guest list kanye
6. The royal wedding date and time
7. William and Kate movie cast
8. Prince Harry paternity
9. William and Kate movie release date
10. William and Kate movie imdb
The Norton team said that dangerous sites are hidden among these search engine results and warned people to make sure to source Royal Wedding news carefully.
The company added people can protect themselves from Royal Wedding related spam by adopting these rules or policies:
Think before you click
Beware of e-mails or links that promise “leaked” footage, offer “scandalous” pictures, or purport to have “secret” information
Go with what you know – While any site could potentially be risky, it’s best to avoid clicking on sites you’ve never heard of that show up in your search results;
and
Stick to the official royal wedding Web site or go directly to reputable news sites to get the latest news and videos of the wedding.
If your corporate network starts to get a bit sluggish Friday, you might have to blame Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Industry analysts are warning IT administrators that the prince’s wedding day could cause a bit of an IT nightmare if too many American workers can’t resist watching the pomp and circumstance from their offices.
Forget lost productivity levels. If enough people are watching the event unfold on a live stream or from online video clips, company networks could become overwhelmed from the extra load.
The prince and his fiance are scheduled to tie the knot at 6 a.m. ET on Friday. And there will be hours more of the big event, including a parade and the couple’s appearance for a kiss on a balcony at Buckingham Palace. All of it will be aired on television and online.
That means as workers get to their offices on Friday morning, many are likely to at least take a peek — even if it’s just to get a look at the bride’s gown or the pageantry of a historical moment.
That added network traffic could wreak havoc with a lot of enterprise systems, said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group.
“There probably will be no shortage of stations live streaming it, and people will be watching snippits on YouTube,” Kerravala said. “This could be quite a big deal for IT. The royal family has wide enough appeal that people are going to watch. It is something that IT should be prepared for.”
Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant with Sophos, a U.K.-based security firm, said she’s sure that there will be a lot of people trying to catch as much of the event as they can.
“These types of events attract both supporters and sneerers alike,” she noted. “It is not often any of us get to see royalty of this caliber getting hitched. Were you around when Princess Di was married? I was just a kid living in the back and beyond of Canada and my friends and I were glued to the telly for the day.”
Theriault added that this time around, people will be glued to their PCs, laptops and tablets, while they watch a live stream or streaming video – all while accessing their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
“With video being so easily accessible from work computers, and with a wedding of this magnitude being broadcast far and wide, there will undoubtedly be many outside the UK who will be watching on their work devices, most likely visually obscured beneath spreadsheets, presentations slides and email when a boss walks by,” she said.
Workers in the U.K. won’t have to worry about hiding their wedding viewing from their bosses. Friday is a national holiday in the U.K. because of the prince’s wedding.
So what is an IT administrator to do? Analysts say they can send out a warning email, reminding workers about what their clandestine wedding watching can do to the company network.
They also can be realistic and set up a TV in a lunch or break room so workers can pop in and get their wedding fix and then get back to work.
“IT might want to watch their loads and be ready to limit bandwidth if things get out of hand,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Or, better yet, encourage interested employees to huddle together in common cubes watching one monitor. This would have the added benefit of keeping them away from the majority of other employees who, while wishing the happy couple well, don’t give a crap about watching them get married live.”
