If you are a director on a U.S. public company, you probably had a queasy feeling in your stomach when you heard about Wikileaks’ potential next target: corporate America.

Let’s face it. If there were to be a data dump of corporate e-mails, documents and other secret information that was the size of the classified U.S. government cables released by the rogue Wikileaks Web site last year, the ramifications for that particular company could be severe. And that’s not so much because the information being leaked was confidential or top secret. It’s how the information is portrayed by the leaker and how key stakeholders and the markets react to that portrayal.

The information itself could be as minor as some embarrassing e-mails or as major as documents that could be discoverable in criminal or civil litigation. But since most IT teams, CIOs, CEOs and directors can’t predict what information might be leaked by an organization like Wikileaks or a whistleblower, for that matter, preparing for such a breach of data security becomes an exercise in crisis risk management.

The type of risks at play here run the gamut from strategic and operational risks to business model and financial reporting risks, especially if you are talking about the release of documents that might intimate a fraud has been perpetrated.

In the case of Bank of America, which happens to be the alleged target of Wikileaks [Read Forbes blog post here], the possibility that such a leak may occur in the near future has cost the bank considerable money. It has been reported by the New York Times that Bank of America hired the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to conduct an internal investigation. The bank is looking for a needle in a haystack as employees in the finance, technology, legal and communications departments try to determine what, if any, computers or hard drives are missing or have been compromised. All this because the director of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said in an interview last year that a major bank would be the next big target of his non-profit organization.

While such a threat couldn’t have been contemplated only 10 years ago, the digitization of our world has made it possible. That doesn’t mean that all leaks of classified or secret information are bad (i.e. the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, WorldCom whistleblower Cynthia Cooper’s testimony). But  the potential downside from such a release of corporate information definitely should keep the C-suite and directors up at night.

via Wikileaks Episode Should be Wake-Up Call for Companies | Governance Center Blog.