Blogging and Privacy
BlogSecurity introduces an article by Sarah Turner:
Sarah Turner is a BA Hons in Business Studies and currently works as a Marketing Manager; she has speciliased in the IT security sector for almost 2 years.
Blogs are growing at an astonishing rate, with over 57 million blogs existing all over the world and roughly 1.3 million posts made every day.
Basically, blogs are online diaries, in which the authors share their thoughts with their readers. The variety of blog types is huge – personal, business, social (eg MySpace and Bebo etc), collaborative, educational and so on. Some are merely one person expressing their thoughts and some corporate blogs are project-managed and involve a variety of people, forming an important part of a company’s strategic marketing programs.
As the popularity of blogging increases, many organisations are either blogging already, or at least thinking about blogging in the future. Blogging at or about work is increasingly being talked about – some organisations use blogging as a method of free PR, whilst others steer clear altogether. Some organisations are happy for their employees to blog about their workplace whilst others frown on it.
Blogging is a relatively new communication method, so many companies won’t have yet implemented corporate guidelines for using or avoiding blogging. Some employees have got into serious trouble through blogging, by disclosing confidential corporate information, expressing extreme political opinions, or blogging during the working day. A couple of them have even been fired – for example Rachel Mosteller was fired a day after writing on her personal blog, "I really hate my place of employment. Seriously."
However, there are also organisations at the other extreme, which encourage their employees to express their opinions through blogs. Microsoft employees, for example, are encouraged to blog about their workplace. These bloggers are often approached for their comments or help with Microsoft security flaws and tend to be seen in a pretty good light when it may be difficult for consumers to get a personal response or one person’s point of view from such a large organisation.
Before giving employees free reign on blogging, or banning them completely, it’s certainly an issue that’s worth devoting some time and attention to discussing. Sure, it has various merits and disadvantages, but with such a huge number of blogs out there in the wild, it shouldn’t be something that’s immediately dismissed.
If an employer is considering creating and managing a corporate blog, here are some tips that they might find helpful to follow:
- Define the purpose of the blog – is it for profit or fun?
- Implement and monitor a blog privacy and usage policy
- Consider how much time and resources will be consumed by creating, editing and managing a blog
- Manage the infrastructure securely – use strong encryption and limit those who have the facility to edit the blog
- Be aware that blogging software can be vulnerable to flaws
And those employees who want to blog about their workplace should consider the following points:
- If blogging is not part of your job role, save it for your personal time
- Don’t blog about confidential corporate information or whistleblow
- Check if your employer has a blogging policy; if they don’t, steer clear of blogging whilst at work
- Don’t express your political opinions
For additional information, Sarah Turner can be contacted via our Contact form.
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