Some companies have applied traditional methods to the problem of social media at work: the soft approach attempts to monitor and regulate via policies; and the hard approach simply slams the door on employee access and use with a heavy hand. Neither of these works particularly well. The former will almost certainly lead to employee confusion and efforts—either intentional or not—to circumvent the policy, and the latter will likely result in discontented employees finding other ways to work around the blockade. In addition, both are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce fully; and attempts to bypass or evade controls could even lead to damage of physical or virtual IT resources.
The cost of security breaches in Canada
There’s a new report from TELUS in partnership with the Rotman School of Management that helps quantify the cost of IT security breaches to Canadian companies.
The report, based on a survey of more than 600 IT security professionals in Canada found that:
- IT security breaches cost the average organization an estimated $834,000 in 2009 – a 97 per cent increase from the $423,000 reported last year.
- There were an average of 11.3 reported IT security breaches per company in 2009, an increase of 276 per cent compared with 2008.
- Many of these breaches were “inside jobs” perpetrated by a company’s own employees
For the Rotman School report, click here. For the story on CBC.ca, click here.
What has your company’s experience been?
Social media in the workplace: Oh what to do!?
If you're reading this blog post, I'll bet that you're at work, on company time. Should you feel bad about that? I'd like to believe that what you're reading has value, and will add to your understanding of today's workplace and HR practices, and maybe that's justification enough. But I wouldn't be surprised if, besides reading blogs, you also looked at your Facebook account and maybe even sent a few tweets while at work. What's your justification for that?