September 17, 2019

Effective Social Media Risk Management

Have you been hit by yet another serious-looking Facebook security vulnerability in your marketing career? Often, such disasters hit when least expected. This highlights the significance of having a social media strategy as a core component of your brand.

It is equally essential to protect your company from data risks that typically arise from social media activities.

Effective Social Media Risk Management: eAskme
Effective Social Media Risk Management: eAskme

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Social media risk management should be an integral part of your company’s IT security risk management framework.

Managing Social Media Risks

Even before you think about managing risks that result from the use of social media channels, you should ask yourself about the leading social media risks that you face.

Hackers are increasingly targeting social media pages to perpetrate their malicious acts.

Here are some of the social media risks that you should be aware of.

User Authorization

The latest Facebook vulnerability affected 50 million accounts, leaving them exposed to potential data leaks. In case Facebook is your main login, it means that your data could be at risk.

Typically, user authentication tokens enable you to use your Facebook login as your first sign-on option.

Whenever you start a new application, you will see the “sign in with Facebook or Google” options.

By choosing the former, you might be risking your data to various vulnerabilities.

Phishing

Despite advances in cyber-security, phishing is still an issue of concern. In recent times, phishing attacks have been increasingly targeting messenger applications.

For instance, you are likely to fall victim to a social media attack if you automate your direct messages to send offers and discounts to customers.

Often, hackers have a field day taking over the automation to send out messages that seem to be coming from you.

To avoid such intrusions, regularly monitor your messenger applications.

Poor Password Policy

If you have a weak password policy, you expose your social media accounts to the possibility of data breaches. Anything shared on the networks can quickly become fodder for hackers.

Weak passwords put your entire corporate environment at considerable risk.

Information on your social media accounts can easily be accessed in case hackers gain control of the accounts.

Therefore, avoid tracking potential leads based on only social media analytics.

Why It’s Important to Manage Social Media Risks

Many business owners and managers focus on the significance of handling employees’ social media use as part of their companies’ social media policy.

This alone isn’t enough since you also need to worth it with the IT department to ensure that the company’s social media activities are well-managed.

Having a sit-down with the Chief Information Officer will present you with the perfect opportunity to understand how your social media use as a marketer makes their job difficult.

For instance, your social media pages might not be third-party vendors, but they still connect to your networks and systems.

Typical social media tools that marketers use include Hootsuite and Buffer.

Talking to your IT department will help you identify the risks posed by these tools.

If you use a work browser that is connected to your company’s work network from company devices, managing your social media accounts affects the information.

For instance, if you stumble across a phishing attempt disguised as an interesting article, and you click on it, malware will get downloaded to your browser.

Strategies For Mitigating Social Media Risks

The following three steps can help you manage and mitigate risks that typify social media marketing.

Social Media Policy

You need to create a policy that is specific to your company’s social media marketing strategy.

This entails ensuring that you have clear expectations relating to password strength, content monitoring, public interactions, access lists, security breaches, and crisis response.

You should discuss with the IT department about the best way of reporting data breaches or managing the aftermath of events such as hackers accessing your social media accounts.

Working together helps you protect your company data as well as client lists.

Training

As bothersome as it might sound to social media marketers, training is the first line of defense against data breaches.

It is essential to train employees in the marketing department on how to detect, mitigate, and manage breaches perpetrated by social media hackers.

In doing so, you will be creating a safe place for your customers.

Similarly, you will be protecting your brand image and identity.

Regular training helps you stay on top of threats that your social media accounts face.

Monitoring

In case you have several people running your social media accounts, ensure that you create a transparent chain of command.

This will help you review all activities on the accounts.

Any social media risk management process should entail undertaking due diligence over information activities.

Marketers should recognize the fact that their strategies also impact on other areas of the company, including its data security.

If you retweet or even share phishing links, you are putting the entire company at risk.

If you still have any question, do share via comments.

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