Social media is the primary means of marketing and customer experience management for SMBs. At least 52% of small businesses post on social media every day and usage is growing. Businesses are using social media to reach audiences at scale and affordably. If digital channels like social media are important to doing business, why protect your social accounts in the future?

Link: https://prnotes.com/news/social-media-security/

SMBs face the same digital threats as businesses. In fact, they are often considered easier targets for cyberattacks. Although security is a top priority, businesses are not always aware of how social media expands the threat surface due to limited time and resources. It is important for SMBs to understand the risks and implement a proactive approach to mitigate them. A single account takeover (ATO), fraudulent or deceptive account on social media can result in SMBs losing significant revenues or even shutting down completely.

How Social Media Threats Happen

The method an attacker uses depends on the social media platform being attacked. Because Facebook allows users to keep their images and comments private, attackers can access posts by befriending the target user or by sending a friend request directly to the target user. If an attacker is able to connect with multiple friends of the target user, the target user is more likely to accept a friend request based on the number of friends connected.

LinkedIn is another common social media destination. LinkedIn is famous for business networking, and the network is usually full of colleagues and other employees within the same organization. If attackers are targeting your business, LinkedIn is a great social media site to collect business emails about phishing attacks. Large enterprises may have multiple employees connected to a network listing employers and positions. An attacker could use this public information to find financial information, personal customer data, or multiple employees with elevated network access.

Gathering information and stealing data are not the only reasons social media is used for reconnaissance. Information posted on social media may be used to obtain passwords or impersonate business users. Many online accounts allow users to reset their passwords by entering a security question. If social media posts provide enough information, attackers can guess the answers to these security questions based on the personal information posted by the target user.

Brand impersonation is another social media threat. Once enough information is gathered, an attacker can impersonate a business brand and trick users into sending money, divulging personal information, or providing the attacker with account credentials. Attackers also use this threat to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) or cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. These attacks can lead to large-scale data breaches and damage to business infrastructure.

How to prevent social media threats

Most social media threats are caused by employees disclosing too much personal and business information publicly. Because these accounts are personal, businesses cannot prevent users from appearing on social media. However, you can educate users about how best to protect their data and credentials.

Education is the key to fighting social media threats. Individuals can educate themselves. However, businesses must provide training programs for all employees to detect and prevent social engineering and phishing. The first step is to educate users about the dangers of disclosing too much information to the public online. Even private social media accounts could be used to attack if an attacker had access to a private feed. Users must not post any personal business information or information that could be used to hijack their social media accounts.

Some organizations distribute mobile devices and allow users to install social media apps. These companies must provide use-limited policies that determine what users can post using their corporate devices. It is also important to protect these devices from malware to prevent the hacking of corporate social media accounts. If an employee physically loses or steals a device, remote wipe software must be installed.

Other training points for employees include:

• Use an ad blocker on your work device. Instruct employees not to click on ads if ad blockers are not feasible. In particular, do not click on advertisements in pop-ups that instruct users to download software to view the content.
• Employees must not share passwords, even if they are in the same department.
• Attackers use fear and urgency in engagements, and staff should consider these tactics suspicious. Messages or social media posts urging employees to act quickly should be ignored.
• Do not accept friend requests from strangers, even if you have multiple friends.
• Do not use social media sites on public Wi-Fi hotspots. Public Wi-Fi is a common location for attackers to snoop on data using man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.
• User account passwords should be changed regularly. However, users should also be encouraged to change their personal social media account passwords.

IT staff should have cybersecurity defenses in place to prevent users from becoming victims of attacks. Email servers can use artificial intelligence applications to catch suspicious emails with malicious links and attachments.

Tips for Social Media Security and Privacy

Use unique passwords for each social network

Although painful, it is absolutely essential that you do not use the same password for Twitter that you use for Facebook, Instagram and other social tools. With one password, hackers can easily access it. Accessing one password means access to everyone. And just imagine how painful it would be to find out that you are locked out of your entire online life. Using one password for multiple services is only as secure as the least secure service you use.

watch out for mailboxes

How can these social account hacks happen? Direct message to you. Yes, if you use the same approach that Fisher has used over the years, they tend to be malicious links in messages or emails. Perhaps sent in a way that appears to have been sent by a colleague or friend, exposing your most sensitive passwords. Fisher finds out who you expect to receive emails from and uses them as a method. This social-engineering approach has been applied to employees of major newspapers and government agencies, so don't think it's absolutely necessary to hack social network accounts. More sophisticated technology.

not too private

Social engineering is where attackers attempt to penetrate your account on all kinds of services using any information that can be gathered from your public profile, such as your date of birth, education, interests, etc. Imagine how easy it is for someone to find the name of their first pet or school on their Facebook profile. Then think about how many services are using it as a security question. Keep your profile as private as possible and think twice before posting absolutely any aspect of your life.

lock your phone

There aren't all faceless scammers on the internet. Your phone can fall into strangers' hands and gain access to social accounts and more. It's not just a malicious update. Once updated, they can figure out your email address, target your friends with your profile as bait, and even change your password. To make this as difficult as possible for an intruder, you should always enable a passcode lock on your phone and set a time limit to no more than a few minutes.

Use the block button

Don't just ignore spammers when they follow you and send you links. Always report the account as spam for others with less information than me. Social networking services monitor this and remove accounts when enough people do the same. It won't stop spammers from returning to new accounts, but it at least hinders their efforts.

Norton Safe Web for Facebook

Use this free app to search your newsfeed for pseudojacking scams or malicious links. Norton Safe Web scans your newsfeed for unsafe links and warns you of potential threats so you don't share them with your friends.

conclusion:

With the increasing use of social tools for business communication, social media security is more important than ever. If you're socially active (who doesn't?), you need to protect yourself from common social media security threats. As we have seen in past events, data breaches and other cybercriminals put many people in the industry at risk. Data security is essential to protecting the privacy of employees, consumers, producers and celebrities. Social media account and page security is very important to SMB security. Security vulnerabilities expose businesses to brand and reputational damage. Our social media security platform is built to protect the channels that matter most to your business.