Considering the popularity and wide adoption of social network systems and the competitive edge these systems provide, there has been a rapid growth in use of these systems to access, store, and exchange personal attribute information in distributed and/or federated environments and this trend is expected to continue. Efficient, secure, and user-centric techniques are important for the successful deployment of such systems. The vision of dynamic social networks is a complex and highly sophisticated one that requiring ongoing research and analysis to continue concurrent with the changing role and face of digital information creation and usage including personal information and contents in social networks. This talk presents ongoing research results and findings related to (a) security mechanisms for securing social networks and (b) analytic intelligence for understanding and discovering social dynamics.