Risk Assessment of Social Media

The use of social media introduces many risks to the enterprise.one common attribute of social media…

The use of Social Media introduces many risks to the enterprise. One common attribute of social media and the technology known as WEB 2.0 is user generated content. Any web site that enables a visiting user to post content provides an opportunity where an organization can be harmed. Although there are many known social media sites, there are thousands of sites that fall within the definition, serving millions of web pages, and all containing content published by visitors to those sites. Some of the risks that an organization should consider include compliance with regulatory requirements, reputational damage, information leakage, loss of intellectual property, malware attacks, copyright infringement, and privacy breach. The organization should be aware of information posted about it on other sites which can also cause damage to the organization. Proper management of social media usage is required, because even if an enterprise prohibits its use, the employee may find a way to do it anyway - even when using social media at home - and this can still cause headaches for the organization. This paper will describe many of the risks of social media usage so that an enterprise can conduct a risk assessment and determine which risks are applicable to the organization.

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