CONFIDENTIALITY & INTEGRITY - RESPONSIBLE & CONSTRUCTIVE USE

CONFIDENTIALITY & INTEGRITY

Please note that there is a very strong expectation within the ACSG community that information exchanged on any platform or forum should be treated as confidential, aligning with the principles of Chatham House. 

Users should consider how they use shared information when discussing with other parties. It is appropriate to discuss the information shared in general terms but to not quote individual users or organisations. If you feel there is a benefit to your own discussion internally to be able to quote another organisation or person then please do seek their agreement to that.

If the Committee has probable cause to believe any user of our forums has passed information to external parties in an inappropriate manner then they will be removed from all forums and ACSG membership withdrawn. Examples of such could be specific comments made on a vendor, specific comments made by an individual about an issue, or benchmark information on member activities being passed to an external party who would gain commercial advantage.

For ACSG to continue our commitment to integrity and safeguarding confidentiality of data, we require all members to use a corporate email in their profile, as this is the most effective way for us to monitor and confirm eligibility of access.

RESPONSIBLE & CONSTRUCTIVE USE

The ACSG forums reflect the professional nature of the users on the forums. Please consider the content that you post and the reason for doing so. All posts on ACSG platforms are expected to be in line with the ACSG Code of Conduct, available on the ACSG website.

In addition, please follow the below guidelines when posting:

General Guidelines:

Bear in mind that many members may not have familiarity with the geography in question; situational context will help members based in other countries gain insight into an unfolding event or discussion. As a general rule of thumb, members should be able to scroll up/back through a discussion and discern the contextual shape of an incident or discussion.

The Message Board is better suited to more general discussions as this is not designed to reflect developing incidents.

Posting of Tactical/Incident Information

Context - Provide contextual information to updates and situation reports to ensure all group users understand the intent and value of a post. Where possible/relevant, seek to provide basic details with respect to source, time, date, location, and potential significance/impact of incident information.

Use of Pictures - Images can be very useful. However, please post in limited volume and consider whether a few points of description would enhance value for other group users or replace the need for images in some cases. Images which are unnecessarily graphic or contain personally identifiable information are not appropriate and will be deleted.

Opinion and Analysis

Provide supporting commentary on information posted as an assessment. If posting an opinion piece or analysis, provide commentary or pose questions. It is often helpful to clarify how such an opinion may impact an organisation’s security posture, long-term outlook, response plan, or risk assessment.

Intelligence and Information sharing

Source or credit intelligence/information that is posted with to allow members to assess level of credibility. If such accreditation is not available then state such and ask for validation. Apply a reasonable level of scrutiny to social media posts—when there is doubt, seek corroboration or clarify that something is not yet established as fact.

Posting of News Items

Most members are following mainstream news feeds already and will normally encounter articles circulated in mass media. Only post news items that offer significant value; include commentary on the impact, uniqueness or relevance.

Bias

Keep all posts neutral and impartial. If guidelines above are considered appropriately then any post that may be perceived as having bias will have context and support.

Polls

Members are free to create benchmarking polls but best practice is to pose the potential question set or issue area to a Committee member first for discussion.

Committee Guideline on Moderation

Clearly offensive language, unless part of a quoted article/message, should be removed by any committee member with Admin rights. If in doubt, then flag on the Committee TG group.

Commentary in the TG groups which is on behalf of a Committee decision should be delivered with “Posted on behalf of the ACSG Committee.”

Should any post be removed, the Committee will address the author to let the author know why the post was removed.