Enterprise Social Software: Security in a Single Word
September 1, 2008
Disclaimer: I write for KMWorld.
My feedreader delivered a story from KMWorld with the intriguing title “Enterprise Social Software Technology.” You will want to read the article here. It provides a glimpse of what I call Heidi Klum (the star of Project Runway and international supermodel) “one day you’re in and the next day you’re out” approach to enterprise software. Social software is the buzzword for software mechanisms that streamline certain types of communication and make it possible to assemble information from different sources in a single Web page. The write up does a good job of collecting buzzwords and explaining each within the context of an enterprise. You can read the full text here. What struck me as interesting is that the issue of security gets a single word. With Sarbanes Oxley, BASEL II, and other governmental regulations increasing the grip, the importance of information security ratchets upwards a notch. Organizations quick to embrace Webby solutions may find themselves scrambling to make whizzy systems mesh with regulatory and legal guidelines. When a legal matter confronts an organization, the importance of “security” pops up a level. Communications germane to a legal matter may be “discovered”. One hopes that “security” warrants more than one word, which is what the author and KMWorld allocate to this topic. When your organization deploys social software, how will the messages be archived and made findable. What’s the audit trail for spoofed messages? What actions are needed to ensure that confidential information finds its way into the shared information space? Does your organization’s security methodology have the means to deal with content germane to a hot topic such as a clinical trial result, an employee’s health, or a new product that is critical to the company’s revenues? Non-social content management in most organizations is a disaster. Will social software tidy the messiness or accelerate entropy? At my age, I err on the side of planning, caution, and careful consideration of regulatory and competitive issues. I leave the craziness to parvenus, wily MBAs, and those with more enthusiasm than common sense. Agree? Disagree?
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2008
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