Security Bullet In
Communiques from the security front, sir
Thursday 7 February 2008, 5:27 PM
IT company implodes - trial by blog
There have been two instances recently of Web 2.0 creating a storm for the organisations involved.
The first is the implosion of a UK risk management company called Zeda. The Nottingham Evening Post ran a story quoting Zeda financial director Mark Doughty saying the reason the IT firm went into liquidation was due to the 'credit crunch' and competition with offshore companies.
"While competing with offshore suppliers has been extremely tough, the significant loss of business as a result of the impact of the credit crunch on many of our financial sector customers means that despite exploring every option, there was no realistic alternative to placing the company into liquidation," said Doughty.
However, people claiming to be ex-Zeda employees soon started to add comments to the story, saying that "poor management" was the primary cause of the liquidation.
"Having known and worked for the management at this company for over twenty years I can well understand the frustrations of the workforce. From a solid base they have eroded a lucrative client base through all I can say is poor management," claimed one alleged ex-employee.
Another alleged ex-employee wrote: "I left Zeda last May, having been sys admin at the Stirling Office for almost nine years. The staff were excellent and great fun, but senior management made headless chickens look calm and collected. I left because the writing was very clearly on the wall. Pity - the early days were good."
There are more allegations, including over-payment of senior management, and that one of the chairmen of the group had the group IT manager mow his lawn.
At the time of writing no-one claiming to be from Zeda senior management had submitted a post, but still, this is a very public discussion.
Organisations can also use Web 2.0 to get customer or citizen feedback. The US Transportation Security Administration launched a blog last week to get some user reaction, with mixed results.
I'll leave you with an excerpt from an IT Week article on the launch of the blog:
"Posts must treat the agency and its employees with respect. That means no vulgar or abusive language, no personal attacks, no ethnic or racial epithets, no spam or marketing pitches, and no unsupported accusations.
However, the presence of a post that begins "Dear fear mongering air Gestapo" suggests that those screening the TSA blog's comments are letting some rather barbed statements slip through."
PreviousComments on this post
A risk management comapny that couldn't foresee the risk of publishing un-moderated comments? No wonder they went out of business!
The concept can work depending on the type of business; if you sell goods or services, a user forum is usefull because most of the conversation will be between users (free support), a blog is a bad idea but if you absolutely must have one, moderate the comments.
Apologies, I didn't make it clear enough that the article about Zeda, and the comments on the article, were actually in an online publication - the Nottingham Evening Post - , rather than on the Zeda website.
Nevertheless, your comments hold true -- it's apparent the company didn't see the risk to it of the approaching "credit crunch", while unmoderated blogs can spell disaster for any company.
Talking to experts from Pinsent Masons solicitors on this subject recently, they advised companies to have a very explicit policy on blogging. If organisations wish to allow employee blogs, they should be very clear about policy on posts which defame the company or bring it into disrepute.
It's all very well having strict policy on what you can and cannot put on a post, comment or blog but if we start to go down the road of screening such material when we don't like the content then people will stop using them. I agree we should screen offensive content but only where it is considered an offense in law.
