In-House Counsel Guidebook: How to Handle Internet Defamation and Online Reputation Attacks August 2014 | Page 5

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The Multi-Disciplinary Approach
The solutions for online reputation attacks are very fact dependent
and require analysis from a variety of different disciplines. Especially
when in-house counsel does not regularly handle online reputation
attack cases, we recommend that the harmed party consult with
a multi-disciplinary team to analyze his or her situation (or, at
minimum, gather information from non-legal experts with relevant
information). In addition to the attorney, a multi-disciplinary team
of experts typically would include a cyber investigator, someone
experienced in online public relations and/or marketing and a
decision maker from the business.
Oftentimes, cyber investigators can find important information
about or relating to the attacker. This includes how sophisticated the
attackers are, whether they are capable of causing further damage,
and how high the negative content will appear in the search engine
results over time.
PR and marketing professionals can provide insights into what kind
of impact the damaging material will have on the business’ online
marketing and PR strategies, as well as how they think they can act
to mitigate the harm of that same content.
The business decision makers often weigh in on their cultural
philosophies on how aggressively they wan ЁѼ