Monitoring Employees' Blog
A recent article by Michael Felberbaum from the Associated Press and published by Yahoo! News
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061029/ap_on_hi_te/military_blogging_2] explains how and why the US Army is monitoring soldier's blogs.
The "Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" based in Virginia, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. Of course, the parallel with the corporate world is a little bit of a stretch (US soldiers may be killed if some information gathered in blogs or videocast is used against them) but I listed below two major points I'd like to use to make a recommendation about your corporate blog and corporate blogging policy.
1. "We are a nation at war," Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader, said. "The less the enemy knows, the better it is for our soldiers." --> well, think about it, if you have a corporate blog and have many employees posting on their own blog, is there a risk some information might be used by your competitors? Blog are already used in Economic Intelligence projects to gather information about a specific company and project. So it could make sense to dedicate some resources to monitor the blogosphere for all posts that your employees publish that talk about their work. You may discover information you may consider in some cases embarrassing or worse, confidential.
2. Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites quarterly --> should you do the same in your company? Ask every employee if and where they blog? I don't see anything shocking about that if it is related to their work but what if they have a blog on a topic that has nothing to do with the company? Or a topic that reveals something personal about them? For privacy reasons, I think it is acceptable to limit the registration to personal blog that may talk about work, otherwise, it might be too intrusive.
Of course, as always, I recommend prevention and education rather than "after the facts" sanctions or censorship. Before you event start thinking about monitoring employees blog, you have to tell them what to do and especially what not to do.
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061029/ap_on_hi_te/military_blogging_2] explains how and why the US Army is monitoring soldier's blogs.
The "Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" based in Virginia, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. Of course, the parallel with the corporate world is a little bit of a stretch (US soldiers may be killed if some information gathered in blogs or videocast is used against them) but I listed below two major points I'd like to use to make a recommendation about your corporate blog and corporate blogging policy.
1. "We are a nation at war," Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader, said. "The less the enemy knows, the better it is for our soldiers." --> well, think about it, if you have a corporate blog and have many employees posting on their own blog, is there a risk some information might be used by your competitors? Blog are already used in Economic Intelligence projects to gather information about a specific company and project. So it could make sense to dedicate some resources to monitor the blogosphere for all posts that your employees publish that talk about their work. You may discover information you may consider in some cases embarrassing or worse, confidential.
2. Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites quarterly --> should you do the same in your company? Ask every employee if and where they blog? I don't see anything shocking about that if it is related to their work but what if they have a blog on a topic that has nothing to do with the company? Or a topic that reveals something personal about them? For privacy reasons, I think it is acceptable to limit the registration to personal blog that may talk about work, otherwise, it might be too intrusive.
Of course, as always, I recommend prevention and education rather than "after the facts" sanctions or censorship. Before you event start thinking about monitoring employees blog, you have to tell them what to do and especially what not to do.
posted by Francois Lavaste at 3:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home