Costs of Implementing Controls

The costs of implementing controls vary by an organization’s size, resources, and infrastructure. The controls put into place should address existing systems and support new products or systems as they are brought online.

Accurate costs for implementation can only be developed after you’ve created a detailed social media security policy, which we defined in Chapter 6.

NOTE

You can also find some additional policy resources at www.securingsocialmedia.com/resources.

Once the policy is in place, you can calculate the implementation costs of the controls you want to put into place. The costs of implementing and monitoring your social media activities can be tracked using Table 9-1. This table takes into account the monitoring and reporting tools necessary to implement employee monitoring and security reporting. For a marketing budget return on investment calculator, a number of free tools are available. One such tool is Frogloop (http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-calculator).

Table 9-1 details what our fictional company, JAG Consumer Electronics, has chosen to do regarding its budget. They have made a lot of progress from no budget to having a dedicated budget.

Table 9-1 Social Media Implementation Costs

Combine the Frogloop calculations with the Data Breach Loss calculator from Tech//404, and you can estimate the return on investment figures for the implementation of technology initiatives. It is important to remember, however, that in the case of social media, threats can be triggered via online discussions, forums, and social media platforms.