Social Media and Risk Management
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have become vital parts of doing business. However, social media can trigger a plethora of risks to your business. It could be unauthorized posts, or even the social media account getting hacked. That’s why it’s advisable to protect your company against data breaches. This can be done through social media risk management.
Recognizing the Risks
Real-time interaction and broad reach make social media platforms powerful tools for advertising and marketing. However, it can accelerate and amplify risks. Social media sites give hackers a platform to make their mischief by creating their content on your account. Security breaches can occur broadly across the social media platform which will affect several accounts.
Let’s have a look at some of the primary social media risks:
Phishing
Phishing is a severe cybercrime where hackers fraudulently attempt to get sensitive information like personal identification such as SSN, usernames, emails, credit card details, and phone numbers.
If you’re conducting your business on Facebook, it’s likely that you have automated your messages to send discounts to your clients. Now, the bad guys will corrupt the automation and send out messages that look like yours. You need to protect your brand by monitoring the messenger applications often to avoid these intrusions.
Weak Password
If you’re still using your name initials or birth date as your password, then you’ll be allowing hackers to breach your data. Passwords should be strong and unique, but not too much complicated for you to remember. You can use a combination of numbers, letters, upper and lower cases.
Remember doing business on social media sites means client information is at risk of hackers gaining control of your account. Are you using a weak password when tracking potential leads? It’s time you safeguard your clients’ information by creating a strong password. Make it easy to remember and change it after every 90 days.
User Authorization
Recently, the Facebook vulnerability left approximately 50 million accounts at the risk of being hacked. It means that your Facebook data is at great risk.
But Facebook sealed the hole. However, this doesn’t mean it cannot happen again. Other applications like Google or LinkedIn might also have vulnerabilities. You should, therefore, be cautious about how you log into your social media sites. Be keen on how you’re using these platforms to log into other applications.
Importance of Managing Social Media Risks
As a marketer, you need to work closely with the IT department in making social media activities. Your account may not be third-party vendors. However, you may have third-party social media tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and IFTTT which connect to your networks and systems. That is why sitting down with your CISO is essential to help you identify the risks these tools can cause.
Social Media Risks Management Strategies
Your CISO will use risk assessment matrix to help you solve data breaches on your social media platforms. The strategies below will curb data risks innate in social media marketing and advertising.
- Create a Policy
Come up with a policy specifically for your marketing strategy on social media. The policy should include:
- Access lists
- Crisis response
- How to interact with the public
- Monitoring strategy
- Potential security breaches
- Password hygiene
- Training Staff
After establishing a robust social media policy, you should work on protecting the image and the brand of your company. Take staff through a training session on how to prevent hacking and the information to share on these platforms. - Monitoring
If you have several people working on your accounts, you’re then required to create a chain of command where you can review the activities being carried out.
You should be aware of the marketing strategies you use and the impact they have on other areas. Before using any risk management process, perform due diligence.
