Dollarphotoclub_56602500-FOR-WEBStaying compliant isn’t easy for any business.

“The average Fortune 100 Company has had 69+ compliance incidents over social media in the past year.”

Are we talking risk versus benefit here? Is the reach of sites like Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter so enticing that often a less careful eye is worth the risk? We don’t believe that’s the case and certainly isn’t the full story found by Proofpoint Nexgate when they looked at more than 32,000 companies.

It’s not that big business is intentionally looking the other way, but there is a struggle to adapt the compliance processes to these large-scale, communication forums. In addition, scale and complexity make policy, training, supervision, and even records retention more difficult than other channels.  Business just isn’t quipped to handle the fast-past, ever-changing social environment.

In addition, the nature of open communication for everyone concept creates an environment where employees and customers are unintentionally making misleading statements and sharing data that is typically under wraps. The average Fortune 100 Company has more than 320 branded social accounts and thousands of employees and followers involved in constant online interaction.

One quick slip of the index finger and send button and there goes news of your next big launch. Unintentional as it is to send to a close friend, news spreads like wildfire and wreaks havoc on your IPO.

Data from the study indicates that each company had an average of 69 compliance red flags turn up; all of which remained on the social site virtually undetected by the internal compliance staff. The largest factor for this mistake? Although Fortune 100 Companies have invested in publishing infrastructure, employees commonly circumvent or are unaware of publishing policy. Only 47% of posts were actually routed through content publishing platforms designed to catch them before they went public.

According to Proofpoint NexGate Recommendations start with establishing ownership. A team built to strategically and effectively take responsibility for the social interactions surrounding their company. With a team in place companies can gain control via:

Defined Policies and Trained Employees

Approved Business Use

Content Control

Publishing Workflow

Automated Social Discovery Tools:

Discovers and Classifies Accounts

Ensures Training

Monitors Compliance

Monitor and Enforce Policy:  

Social media policy monitoring technology functions 24 X 7 X 365 at virtually unlimited scale to automatically identify messages that represent security or compliance risk.

Data Retention:

Multiple regulations and best practices dictate that all social media messages be retained to meet future audit and legal discovery requests.

 

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