Ed Gibson is Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft UK and a 20-year veteran of the FBI. We asked him for his advice about blogging safely, especially for businesses.
Blogs serve a valuable purpose. They enable two-way communication on a vast scale that websites can’t match. By reaching out to the community of bloggers and their readers businesses can generate good will and good publicity. It’s not difficult either. You can start your own free blog in a few minutes using MSN Spaces.
We’ve seen the benefits at Microsoft. Thousands of Microsoft employees write blogs and, of course, the company has its own official sites. For example, The Microsoft IT Professional technical evangelist team, headed up by Eileen Brown, have over one million hits per month on their blogs.
Public blogs, hidden problems
But they also have a dark side. If you don’t take the proper steps to protect your personal information it can result in all sorts of bad things happening. You just can’t forget the rules of life when you go online.
The attractions of the internet are also its weaknesses: global reach, a mass audience, and easy searching. Blogging sites, just like websites, are not geographically restricted nor can they be controlled by individual countries. Worse, once something is published online you may not be able to unpublish it. Stuff on the internet is there forever.
Businesses and individuals face similar risks
There isn’t any difference between businesses and individuals. The concerns are pretty much the same. I always caution against putting anything on a blog site that you wouldn’t be willing to hand out to strangers while walking down the street. Of course, businesses have a greater exposure than an individual because of the risk of damage to their reputation. The bigger the business, the bigger the risk.
Companies should treat their business blogs in exactly the same way as their business website. The big issue is employee education. Do you have a policy about what can be put online? Are they aware of it? The policy that says what can go on a company website should dictate what goes on a blog. I don’t think we can change the rules just because we call it blog.
Be careful what you say
Our concern as a company, as a good corporate citizen, is for young people who may not understand the impact that their blog sites may have. They need to understand that they must not give out information online that could be used to identify them. And they need to be wary about how they present themselves online. I use a rule of thumb: if you would be embarrassed to talk to your grandmother about something, don’t do it online.
The same thing applies to business blogs. Be careful what you put online. Be careful about the rules you set for staff blogging. And if there’s something you would be embarrassed to put on your company’s homepage, don’t put it on your blog.
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