Why Social Media Security Matters

So you’re interested in a social media security solution. Where do you begin? Naturally, you try Google. But what do you search? “Social media security, social media compliance, social media risk management, social media threat detection, social media security threats?”

Security professionals have become inundated with “different” solutions that try to solve all the security problems social media may bring to an organization. Marketing jargon aside, the reality is, all of these solutions are really trying to solve the same problems — albeit some may focus on certain aspects of social media that others don’t.

Luckily, ZeroFox has decided to make life a little easier for you all. We’ve created a simple list as to why social media security matters to you and your organization:

Targeted Phishing & Malware Live in the Wild

How This Affects You: Attackers send malicious links directly to an organization’s employees with a well crafted attempt to disguise their intentions. To make matters worse, all of this exists outside of traditional security perimeters. There’s no one stopping an employee from clicking on a link from a “friend.”

ZeroFox Best Practices: “Stop! Don’t click that!” Create a risk-aware culture. If something smells phishy, report it immediately.

There Are Too Many Corporate & Executive Impersonators

How This Affects You: It’s unbelievably easy for an attacker to build a fake account — often times of a well known executive, board member, or brand — develop a following, and carry out social engineering campaigns, slander a company, disrupt customer support operations or disseminate malicious links. Here’s the kicker: a social media presence is not required for these attacks to take place. A cyber criminal can impersonate anyone at any time.

ZeroFox Best Practices: If you are going to maintain a social presence, make certain that the people you friend/follow, and the people who follow you have legitimate accounts. Confirm the accounts with your organization.

Customer Fraud & Scams Ruin Customer Relationships

How This Affects You: As an organization, you’ve spent countless hours and dollars facilitating, maintaining and cultivating a healthy customer relationship. Breaking that trust is as easy as having a customer click on a phishing link disguised as a “discount” link.

ZeroFox Best Practices: If you are a customer, make sure the company account offering you a deal/coupon is the real, verified account. If you are a company, make sure to know which deals and promotions are currently being offered. Do a quick search to try and find any impersonating accounts giving away deals that are too good to be true.

Cyber Criminals Use Social Media to Plan Attacks

How This Affects You: Organizations are not the only ones leveraging the power of social media. Cyber criminals conduct business on social media too, planning attacks — be it DDoS, physical attacks, cyber defacement or hacktivism. Not having insight from the social web leaves your organization more open and susceptible to attack.

ZeroFox Best Practices: Keep your eyes peeled for suspicious posts in regard to your brand (whether it is through keywords, hashtags or mentions).

Hackers are out to Compromise and Take Over Your Account

How This Affects You: Leveraging a variety of tactics, hackers can easily take over a legitimate social media account, disseminating slanderous or malicious content to the world. The severity of repercussions is directly correlated to how soon the takeover is detected and remediated — the longer it goes undetected, the more significant the consequences.

ZeroFox Best Practices: Always enable two-factor authentication for all your social networks logins. This will make it much more difficult to take over an account.

The Dissemination and Sale of PII

How This Affects You:  Private information, maliciously or mistakenly posted on social media, becomes instantly public. This information — credit card numbers, social security numbers, email addresses, bitcoin wallets, Personal Health Information (PHI), phone numbers or confidential corporate information — is collected, bought and sold on social media, the social web and dark social.

ZeroFox Best Practices: Never disclose sensitive information on any social media channel that has the possibility of compromising you or your organization.

At ZeroFox, we believe in the necessity for organizations and businesses to utilize social media. Unfortunately, there will inevitably be people who leverage the scale, trust and reach of social media for malicious reasons. This is why ZeroFox believes that social media security is here to stay. At the end of the day, what matters most is protecting you and your organization from the multitude of risks, threats and attacks via social media. The first step in being secure is building awareness, so it seems you’re well on your way!