7 Steps To Effective Social Media Risk Management

Following are seven steps that provide guidance on mitigating existing risks–including reputation risks, risks of using social media for candidate screening and employee termination, the risk of virus attacks, and the risk of employees making company information public.

Mitigating the risks
None of the myriad risks associated with social media use can be eliminated completely. But taking a thoughtful and structured approach to understanding and assessing the risks and then developing and implementing a comprehensive plan will reduce a bank’s susceptibility. To deploy an effective social media risk management strategy, we recommend banks take the following actions.

 

1. Engage a multidisciplinary team. Social media is not just an IT or marketing problem.Since social media activity affects a wide range of functions, an effective strategy brings together senior representatives from Human Resources, Legal, Information Technology, Marketing, Risk Management, Public Relations, Compliance, and any other affected functions.Assigning a project or program manager will help to track and maintain the team’s progress.

2. Document current and intended social media use. The multidisciplinary team’s first order of business should be to document how each department currently uses social media and how it intends to use it in the future.It’s up to the multidisciplinary team to use the bank’s overall strategy as a guide to determine which types of social media use align with organizational objectives. The team then establishes how the bank–including its employees, recruiters, marketers, and IT department–will use and be affected by social media. Having multiple people involved in making these decisions can present a challenge, but having one person responsible for the execution of the social media strategy–and having the support of senior management–will move this process along more quickly.

3. Perform a risk assessment. Before the multidisciplinary team can even consider safeguards and controls, it must identify and quantify the various risks associated with social media use.This risk assessment takes into account the likelihood and potential damage resulting from occurrences such as employee defamation of the bank, its products, or its leadership–as well as any other risks to which social media use exposes a bank. The risk assessment also involves identifying the controls that are already in place, which could be mitigating a portion of the risk. To help prioritize the most significant risks, a bank can determine the sufficiency of these controls and work them into an overall residual risk rating.