In As social media is evolving, organisations can no longer turn a blind eye to its reach or its power. It has become common in the workplace, and large organisations are increasingly accommodating this new trend. However, there lie the major challenges for CIOs and IT managers in coping with the security challenges.
The IT teams are making concerted effort to understand social media, assess opportunities and threats, plan a strategy and advise the executive team accordingly. Gartner says that IT heads need to lead the initiative and take a proactive decision in defining the terms and conditions of social platform usage. While many companies have adopted a block and deny strategy, this practice is declining. Accordingly, fewer than 30 percent of large organisations will block social media by 2014. This is compared with 50 per cent in 2010.
Dinesh Singh, Head IT, SJM Technologies Ltd says, Social media sites are now part and parcel of most of our lives. Many of us spend approx 20-25 percent of our time on these sites. Many organisations find it difficult to stop employees from spending time on social media sites during work office hours.
Agreeing with Singh, Archie Jackson, GM (IT), Steria Ltd adds, It is well understood that social media is just more than a marketing channel and is pivotal to progress in an organisation.
According to Gartner, some of the business benefits from social media that most companies find is to be an attractive target for company PR and marketing as social networking goes beyond traditional push advertising by opening up a two-way channel between customers and companies. It is therefore a great source of ideas, feedback and a viable option for customer service. It can even provide a route to market for some businesses. Social media networking and support can help employees use their networks and online connections to get support for their work.
The employee motivation and morale has got a face lift as it has replaced email and the telephone as the primary means of communication with friends.
However, these sites have the due share of having a negative impact on the users. Social media is big threat to enterprises with most unsolicited content being put up on the web sites. Almost 20-25 per cent of a employee's productive time goes waste. Multiple types of threats emerge through this, which could be identity theft, employee misdeeds, legal problems and internet threats, says Kanaka Durga Bhavani Prasad S, Senior IT Manager, Fifth Avenue Sourcing Pvt Ltd.
Some of the risks and challenges associated with social media according to Gartner include: malware, trojan or even a spam attack on your organisation. Besides there is always a risk of social medias most damaging the brand reputation and public image of a organisation and also that of the employees, customers and vendors etc., where none have control.
According to Jackson, one must consider factors like trademark infringements; copyrights; privacy; reputation risk; defamation; mis-statements due to negligence on websites and so on, to prevent misuse of the platform.
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