How Much Monitoring is Too Much Monitoring for Social Network Compliance and National Safety?
Just recently, it was reported that Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers GPS location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This, in conjunction with the posting of internal documents from Yahoo! and Myspace revealing their compliance policies has web surfers on edge.
How much oversight is too much oversight?
It’s a fundamental question, and things end up being pretty black and white.
With that said, for a company that has employees that post information on Twitter, Facebook and others, social network compliance is absolutely necessary. The archiving and/or monitoring of this information is something that responsible companies should definitely invest in, and they should make sure their employees know this is occurring. If the employees realize that this is entirely necessary from a legal and liability standpoint, they would understand why it is necessary.
In the end, if you’re trying to achieve complete social network compliance, then you need to find a social network compliance solution that can archives tweets, Facebook updates and the like. And if you do, it’s very strongly recommended that note of this is found within your company policy and that your employees are aware.
Social Network Compliance Heavily Depends on Clear Staff Policy
One of the most basic ideas in keeping your workplace social network compliant is often overlooked. Without written documentation and guidelines on when, how and if employees can visit their favorite social network the usage and frequency of visits to social networks can vary from one cube to the next.
Having one written, clear social network compliant policy, whether it’s allowing usage on breaks or disallowing them altogether, is the first step to having a compliant workplace.
Should I allow employees to visit social networking websites?
There isn’t a clear answer to this question, which is very much on the minds of CEOs, CIOs and IT personnel. It really comes down to situational decisions, as well as ideology.
Is your company culture the type that uses its employees as organic ways of advertising your brand? Is your company subject to FINRA audits which may view postings on social network sites as advertising? These are factors that should be weighed when making the decision on employee use of social networks while at the workplace.
In addition, as the laws and regulations evolve that require the capture and ability to produce electronically stored information (ESI), social network postings including tweets on Twitter and status updates on LinkedIn and Facebook may very well be required.
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