Week 5

The Legal Risks and Risk Mitigation Strategies for Organization’s Implementing Social Media

Active participation of organization in social media activities has exposed the organization to high risks. Access use of social media technologies prone organization to three kinds of risks;

     1.     Reputational risk
        2.     Information security risk

          3.     Legal and employment risk

Use of social media exposed the organization to reputational risk; they need to understand the types of risk that is coming from either general public, employees of the organization, and from organization itself.  The general public may give open comments about the organization on social network, they could be positive or could be negative and it might sabotage the image of the organization. Employees of the organization can leak the inside information on social networks about the performance of the organization or the negative information about the culture of the organization that could harm the image of the entity.  Lack of organization’s presence on social media could expose them into high risk of defame. They should be there to defend their self or even promote their culture or market their self on social media.

Second kind of risk is the information security risk that is usually faced by all organizations who have their existence on social networks. The information shared by them on social forum are not even secured and protected no matter how strict security measures they apply. This risk is due to the low protection walls of social networks that can be easily breached. 

Third kind of risk hovers on the head of employee, in case wrong information shared by them they can be exposed to the legal consequences; it could be legal proceedings against them or termination from the organization.