Posts Tagged ‘information security risks’

If Compliance Isn’t Documented It Didn’t Happen

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

Most of the 250+ organizations I’ve audited, and the hundreds of others I’ve had as clients, hate documentation. At least creating documentation. So, they don’t do it, or they do it very poorly. Or, they document things they don’t need to, and fail to document the important things. And then, considering all that documentation, they often don’t retain it long enough, or forget where they put it.

Last year I wrote an article about legal retention length requirements. Now I’m focusing on the types of compliance activities organizations need to document, and then the need to retain that documentation for the appropriate periods of time. (more…)

Address Privacy During Social Media Marketing

Friday, August 29th, 2014

Over the past few months I’ve been creating some social media marketing privacy guidelines and requirements for a couple of my large clients. Today I read a post from a fellow IBM Midsize Insider contributor, Jason Hannula, “Social Media: Enterprise Content or Customer Relationship Information?” It stated that “93% of marketers are using social media for business.” A large number of these are from small and midsize organizations. It is important for these organizations to not only keep Jason’s suggestions in mind, and follow the business’s data governance requirements, but also to make sure privacy is also appropriately addressed. Many, perhaps most, small to midsize businesses do not yet have social media privacy requirements in place. (more…)

Avoid this Common Privacy Choice Mistake

Monday, August 25th, 2014

Many marketing professionals have a common temptation; they want to send as many marketing messages to as many people as possible, and they would love to send it to all folks who have ever been customers or clients of their business, and often times actually want to simply send to everyone whose email address they can obtain in any way.

Privacy professionals make many efforts to guide marketers on what is acceptable and not acceptable. After all, (more…)

Security is Action…Privacy is the Result of Action

Thursday, July 31st, 2014

What is the difference between security and privacy?

Many of my clients are small and midsized businesses. They often express confusion over what each of these terms (neither of which have a universally-accepted definition) actually means, how they are different, and how they are similar. This is important for business leaders to understand so they can make appropriate decisions within their information security and privacy management programs. Especially in small and midsize businesses, where there may not be a specific position to address either of these important topics. Let’s start with considering at a high level the differences between information security and privacy. (more…)