The internet-savvy generation now entering the workforce is on course for a collision with corporate technology managers.

Echo boomers - as they are dubbed in the US because they are the children of the original baby boomers - are accustomed to using whatever tools are available on the internet to get the job done. IT managers, on the other hand, have traditionally tried to control the environment in their organisations as much as possible, and only then consider what staff require to do their jobs most efficiently.

The latest industry figure to address this tension is Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist with access technology specialists Citrix. He spoke in Dublin this week about Web 2.0 security risks.

New interactive services such as Flickr, Gmail and Basecamp, which are more like desktop applications than websites, present challenges for traditional security models. "Web 2.0 is not inherently less secure, but it is delivering much more of an application to the user," said Mr Roemer. "Because it is highly interactive, the potential is there to compromise the browser and all it connects to."

In other words, corporate data such as passwords and user IDs could be exposed by staff visiting sites that interact with the web browser at a deeper level.

"The traditional security parameters have gone," he said. "We have to ask how we can provide access to rich applications through dirty networks and across systems of questionable integrity. There is no longer any trusted network, device or user, but we can still do it securely."

To illustrate this, Mr Roemer said the security breach at TK Maxx parent TJX, which led to thousands of credit-card details being compromised, would not have happened if the company had assumed its internal WiFi network was insecure.

Given that Citrix stands to sell more of its access control technology on the back of this approach, it is no surprise that Mr Roemer is advocating it. However, he is far from alone in discussing the impact the Bebo generation will have on how technology is used in business.

Last February, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote on his blog about the conflict between those who control technology in businesses and "employees who want to use the tools increasingly available on the wide-open web to help them do their jobs better".

Anderson said chief information officers were increasingly being forced to prevent younger staff "from taking matters into their own hands".

Mr Roemer said managers had to consider how they could accommodate advances in technology. "Rather than supporting all Web 2.0 technology, chief information officers should provide very specific browser environments for different applications that staff need," he said.