Loud Thinking

Keep Your Company’s Secrets in the Digital Age

Through social sharing technologies like Facebook and Twitter, your employees may be unwittingly exposing company secrets. Even seemingly innocuous information like travel schedules or what online groups an employee joins can give competitors inside intelligence. Here are a few ways to shield your organization from prying eyes:

Assess and educate. Determine what’s important for your company to protect and make sure everyone understands what information might be sensitive. For example, a person’s list of LinkedIn connections can reveal her network and even potential partnerships in the works.

Disable geolocation. Make sure employees turn off these features so that they don’t inadvertently leave footprints that show where they’re visiting and who they might be meeting with.

Keep it inside. Implement and promote internal social networks that are walled off from the outside world. These platforms allow employees to talk shop without risking information leakage.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “How Not to Unwittingly Reveal Company Secrets” by Martin Harrysson, Estelle Metayer, and Hugo Sarrazin.