Thesis (MTech (Internal Auditing))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / The research study focuses on the risk management practices and procedures small, medium and large enterprises in the Cape Metropole have in place to mitigate social media risks. Enterprises and employees of these enterprises use social media platforms for business and personal purposes. There usage could have an impact on the enterprise should social media risks materialise due to a lack of formalised risk management practices and procedures. The purpose of the research study is to determine whether enterprises have risk management practices and procedures in place to mitigate social media risks. The research study also expands on the controls enterprises have in place and seeks to gain an understanding of the type of social media platforms used by the enterprise. The research study consisted of a literature review and an empirical study to investigate social media risk management practices and procedures in enterprises. A quantitative research method were used to carry out the required research, by making use of a structured questionnaire to obtain responses from respondents from small, medium and large enterprises in the Cape Metropole. The research results obtained revealed that most enterprises have implemented risk management practices and procedures. However, not all enterprises have risk management functions in place which involves all relevant departments to support in mitigating social media risks, more specifically to monitor and manage adherence to social media policies and procedures. The researcher recommends that enterprises have to enhance their control environment and improve existing risk management functions, practices and procedures on a continuous basis before such risks materialise and potentially damage their enterprise.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and try to describe how social media risk management is performed and what impact social media risk management could have on organizations IT security.  The outcome of this study is possible knowledge for researchers and for practitioners in the field, of how social media risk management was handled in some organizations in Sweden and what impact the chosen social media risk management could have on the IT security. This study looked at social media risk management and what impact it could have on organizations IT security through prior studies done and through data collected from semi structured interviews and surveys.  Social media risk management was according to this study performed mostly reactive and a majority of the organizations did not have risk management specifically for social media. More organizations had a social media policy than performed risk management for social media.  The risk management for social media in the IT organizations in this study was described in the interviews as reactive due to several reasons: old systems that made it hard to be proactive, lack of time for prioritizing social media risks or risk management for social media was currently being worked on.  The proactive IT organizations described themselves to have a general security policy and risk management plans for basically everything. Social media risks can lead to risks that impacts organization IT security.  In the interview notes five quotes was found that could be considered to suit the risks themes found in prior studies.

This qualitative study focuses on how social media policies and guidelines are used in practice within nine different Swedish industrial B2B companies. This study identifies their social media policies and guidelines in order to examine its content and investigates how the participating companies use their social media policies and guidelines in their marketing activities according to the interviewees. A qualitative research method with nine semi-structured interviews has been conducted and analyzed with a thematic analysis by using research and theory within the chosen subject.The findings of this study reveals that the companies have social media policies and guidelines in place in order to satisfy different needs, hence, some of the companies use it as a fundamental framework, while other companies incorporate it to a greater extent and use it as a way of handling risks.Through its managerial and social media policies and guidelines implications, this study contributes to the identified research gap regarding how social media policies and guidelines usage in B2B industries by providing insights from practice.