Understanding (mis)information spreading for improving corporate network trustworthiness

The explosion of social networks is pervading every form of business. When used inside corporate networks, they can create potential vulnerabilities as employees at the lower levels in the organization chart may become influential thanks to social connections. This unexpected influence could be dangerous if the employee behaves maliciously reducing thus the trustworthiness of the overall organization. The paper is a first attempt in understanding this phenomenon by proposing a model for corporate networks that is able to measure the influence of each employee on the overall organizational chart, that is, to which extent an employee is able to spread (mis)information through the corporate network. The evaluation is done considering the Enron case. © 2013 Springer-Verlag