Role of Social Networks in E-government: Risks and Security Threats

Abstract

Social networks are becoming an important intermediary for interaction between governments, citizens, governmental agencies and business sectors. The popularization of social networks among users allows transforming public administration into open governance form and changing government-citizen relationships. There are various applications of social media to enable communication between users and share personal information. Currently, different attacks on social networks targeting the e-government system pose a great risk for users. In paper the role of social networks and security in e-government is examined. Potential threats targeting the confidentiality and security of each social network user are analyzed and classified. A multi-criteria evaluation method is proposed for analysis of social networks security threats. Potential threats are ranked according to the criteria determined by the Fuzzy TOPSIS method. In the numerical study, the social network security threats are evaluated and ranked according to selected criteria (such as interception of confidential information, reputation loss in government-citizen (G2C) relations and organization of social-political conflicts).