Cyber Security Awareness Month: Social Media at the U of S

 Social media is no longer just a tool for personal use. Most units within universities today actively use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to manage marketing and student, faculty and employee interaction. At the U of S alone, there are over 25 Twitter accounts for various units. The ability to reach out to our selected audiences to create awareness of our programs and services and engage our audience is invaluable but with the increased connectedness comes facebook social media marketing increased security challenges. Social networking sites are a prime target for cyber criminals because of the rise of social engineered hacking. Social engineering is the art of manipulating people so they give up confidential information. There are generally two approaches to social media engineering: computer-based and human-based. Computer-based social engineering focuses on phishing and online scams (discussed in last week’s article). Human-based social engineering is slightly different in that it requires interaction with humans; person-to-person contact is used to retrieve desired information. This can include impersonation, posing as an important user or posing as a friend. Social media accounts run by university units and personal social media accounts held by students, faculty and staff are both targets for cyber criminals. You know that convenient GPS system that is embedded in your phone? The location data from it can be embedded into pictures you take with your smartphone. When you upload your pictures, that data can come with it. Now, anyone who sees your photo can examine it for metadata, and potentially see where and when you took that photo! An easy way to see this data would be disadvantages of social media marketing to right click on any picture on your computer, and click on the “Properties” option. Then choose the “Details” tab. Here, you can see the data your photo contains that you might not realize was there. Sure, some of it is harmless, but what if GPS coordinates were embedded in photos of your children at a playground? And this isn’t even the easiest information for someone to learn about you. Simply posting status updates about your vacation could tip off a would-be burglar to your whereabouts.

Design of cyber security awareness game utilizing a social media framework

Social networking sites are a popular medium of interaction and communication. Social networking sites provide the ability to run applications and games to test users' knowledge. The popularity of social networks makes it an ideal tool through which awareness can be created on existing and emerging security threats. This paper proposes an interactive game hosted by social networking sites with the purpose of creating awareness on information security how to do social media marketing threats and vulnerabilities. The game applies principles of good game design which includes: the decisions over hypermedia, multimedia and hypertext to achieve perception, comprehension or projection, comprehensive database of questions, weighted system, use of practical data, automation, dynamcis, effort and user acceptance. The aim of the paper is show the effectiveness of using a virtual tool in cyber awareness creation. This paper will thus deal with the proposal of an interactive web-based game which informs and then tests users about potential security threats and vulnerabilities. This isn’t restricted to just social network sites, but it definitely applies here. With every social networking site we sign up for, there comes a Terms of Service (ToS). I’d be willing to bet that most of us don’t actually read through that agreement. If we did, what I just said about privacy wouldn’t surprise you. Most social networking sites reserve the right to use any of your photos for their advertising purposes. This applies even to photos you mark “private,” or only allow certain friends to see. And once your photo is added to your account, it is being stored on their servers. But what happens when you take a photo off of the site? Surely they delete it from their servers too? Wrong. They don’t have to, and most likely social media marketing pdf don’t. Their money comes from advertising, and what better advertising do they have than using real user photos and information to promote their site. This same idea applies to closing your account. There’s no guarantee your data will be deleted automatically. In fact, the site may require that you contact them directly to request deletion of your data, and that could take weeks!

Social Media and the Use of Personal Information National Cyber Security Awareness Month

The myriad of social networking websites currently available have hundreds of millions of registered users. But just like any kind of cyberspace communication, using social media can involve some risk. Once a user posts information to a social networking site, that information can no longer be considered private and can be used for criminal purposes. Even if you use the highest security settings on your account, others may—intentionally or not—leak your information. And once in the hands of criminals, this personal information can be used to conduct all kinds of cyber attacks against you or your family members, friends, social marketing media or business associates in an effort to obtain additional and even more sensitive personal information. For example, cyber criminals often craft very convincing spear phishing campaigns leveraging information found on social media to obtain more sensitive personal information. Spear phishers target select groups of people with something in common—i.e., they work at the same company, bank at the same financial institution, attend the same college, or order merchandise from the same website. Authentic-looking e-mails are sent to potential victims—ostensibly from organizations or individuals they would normally get e-mails from—asking the recipients to click on embedded links in the e-mail. These links lead to official-looking websites, where victims are asked, for a variety of urgent and legitimate-sounding reasons, to input personal information like passwords, account numbers, user IDs, and PINs. The result? Criminals can get hold of your banking credentials and credit cards numbers, social media for marketing download malware onto your computer, gain access to sensitive company data, and/or hijack your computer for other nefarious purposes. Criminals who troll social networking sites looking for information or people to target for exploitation run the gamut—from sexual predators, hackers, and financial fraudsters to business competitors and foreign state actors.