UK Companies Exposed To Social Networking Risk

Given the huge number of people using social networks, companies are understandably eager to tap that resource in a bid to raise their visibility, strengthen their brand appeal, attract new customers and even improve performance. However, it appears that business organisations still lack the appropriate strategies to make social media campaigns deliver the intended results and most companies are not investing enough in the development of such strategies. On top of that, corporations are not yet up to scratch when it comes to addressing the security aspect of social media use, Computer Weekly reports.

The IT news website was citing the findings of a survey commissioned by professional services provider KPMG and conducted by OnePoll. It included more than 1,000 senior executives at British companies, with 87% of them stating that they make use of social media to improve business. In the past year, however, 45% of them have had to deal with a security scare resulting directly from corporate social media activities. These scares included a confidential data leak caused by an insider and a complaint offensive that impacted negatively on company operations and/or reputation.

According to the poll results, 43% of participants agree there should be strict guidelines in place when it comes to the content employees can post on social networks on behalf of their companies. Another 27% support the idea that employees should be free to do that when they use their personal social network accounts. However, the majority of respondents (73%) revealed that their employees were offered only about four hours of training annually in social media use.