Quick – who is responsible for your corporate Web site? Content, security, privacy, accessibility. Do they all fall under one umbrella or do individual business units run their portion of the site like an autonomous fiefdom?
A recent Watchfire Corp. survey found that security is the top corporate Web site concern. While almost 90 per cent of respondents, representing a wide array of industries and government departments, said security was a critical issue, barely half could muster the same concern for privacy and accessibility, and far less seem to be concerned with corporate branding and third-party content.
To top it off, this concern did not always translate into action. For example, most companies (slightly more than half) said privacy is a critical issue, yet 60 per cent admitted they did nothing to monitor compliance with privacy laws. At the heart of the problem is the need to create a corporate Web site continuity plan – in essence, deciding who should be responsible, and what should get done.
David Grant, senior marketing manager with Watchfire in Ottawa, said the survey results are surprising.
“[They] thought they had a decent grasp of the issues, but when it came to actually asking them what they were doing, they weren’t doing anything,” he said.