Social Media Security Risks
Admittedly social media platforms are somewhat like a minefield. Threat actors excessively use them for phishing attacks, not to mention social engineering surveillance techniques that make people more vulnerable.
Bob is someone who has information public on Facebook. Anyone who searches him up can find his birthday and some pictures of his family and friends. Any threat actor can use this information to hack his passwords or launch social engineering attacks.
Apart from that, reconnaissance techniques also use social media platforms to facilitate identity theft. A threat actor can gain information about individuals by stalking them on social media profiles, groups, and pages. Let’s retake Bob’s example: he is a very active part of various groups revolving around pets, music, and art. He has also liked many related pages.
Through techniques like surveillance, the threat actor might dog Bob’s activities on such pages and groups to build his personality profile. The threat actor can then use this profile for identity theft.
These social media security risks demand the use of robust information security practices. Since social media platforms are beneficial in several ways, practicing good cyber hygiene will help utilize the valuable aspects of social media.
Social Media Security Best Practices for Organizations
Since social media is potentially beneficial for organizations, they can implement several security practices to ensure the safe use of these platforms. Some of the following tips can help provide privacy and security online.
Implement a social media security policy
A social media security policy helps provide employees guidelines for responsible social media practices. The policy should entitle specific teams for handling social media content. Moreover, employees should post content on social media platforms with strict adherence to confidentiality and copyright guidelines. The team should also be well-aware of safe social media practices such as:
- Implementing secure passwords
- Multi-factor authentication
- Identifying and reporting potential threats
It is crucial to ensure that the social media security policies are easy to understand and implement. The staff should receive regular training sessions on the latest social media threats and guidelines.
Training sessions will allow these employees an opportunity to engage, discuss, and better implement these policies. Moreover, it is also crucial to revise and update the procedure after every few months ensuring the policies remain in routine and memory.
Appoint a specific social media team lead
Appointing a specific social media team lead is an efficient way to mitigate security risks. The team lead should be responsible for ensuring the creation and implementation of security policies for social media. They should collaborate with the IT team to conduct in-depth research on the latest social media threats and draw out the best practices to mitigate these threats.
Moreover, the social media team lead should strictly monitor and manage the content on social media platforms. They should decide who has access to social accounts and publications. In case of mistakes, the team lead will help initiate the proper response to mitigate security and reputational risks to your organization.
Establish a robust information security culture
When it comes to information security, ensure you have robust privacy and security intact, securing your organization at several endpoints. To start, educate and spread awareness on the social media attack vectors while teaching them ways to mitigate them. Such cyber awareness training will help reduce minor social media security risks without having the IT staff burdened.
Organizations should also have a risk policy intact, mapping the best route to take in a cyber attack. Social media-based cyber-attacks are often phishing attacks or malware infections, all designed to leak sensitive data.
Therefore, organizations should set up security software such as antivirus and ensure data protection through encryption. Moreover, the organization should set up a protocol for reporting such cyber incidents to take immediate action against them.
How Can Organizations Promote Social Media Security?
Ensuring cybersecurity, especially over social media, is a challenging task to achieve. It is, therefore, crucial for organizations to recognize these issues and work out a way to mitigate them.
Since employees are a critical part of organizations, the best security practices start with training and awareness. Organizations should ensure that the social media teams get proper insight and training regarding rising security threats and concerns.
The training should also include guidelines on how to react in case of a social media security breach. The most crucial aspect is to ensure open communication with employees; otherwise, they might cover the security incident leading to higher losses.
Establishing security policies and guidelines in procedures and responsibilities can further help employees realize the depth of security issues. The set guidelines help provides a clearer perspective on the best practices to maintain security and privacy.
Such practices would help employees realize their importance and take more responsibility for their actions, ultimately leading to a more productive security posture.
Final Words
Social media security is one of the most crucial aspects of an organization. It helps the organization create and maintain an online presence that is crucial for recognition. Moreover, these social media channels allow open communication between employees, clients, and partners.
It is, therefore, essential to maintain safe social media practices to utilize social media platforms for your organization. These practices include implementing the right policies and procedures, training the workforce, and promoting cyberculture that defends the organization against threats like phishing attacks.
At Right-Hand, we support organizations of various industries and sizes to make sure they reap all benefits of social media, mitigating human risk through cyber awareness.
Do you want to know how we bridge detection, identification, and response to human-based threats? Click below to schedule a personalized demo.