How to Boost the Company

 For the majority of companies, the social networks represent a privileged instrument to improve the efficiency of their communications and increase the brand reputations. Social networks allow companies to reach a wide audience instantly, increasing the trust social media marketing dallas of customers for the company and its products. Many businesses recognize the benefits of having a social media presence for long-term marketing purposes; however, many are not aware of social media’s security issues. Almost any organization ignores how employees’ own social presence can expose the company to cyber threats that could harm its reputation. The reputation is the pillar for the success of any company and a proper security posture on the social networks could prevent serious damages to their image. Social media offer a huge marketing opportunity at limited costs, but it is important for companies to not underestimate the threat to their reputation. Security experts believe that IT companies are among the most exposed entities to threats because of the young age of most of their workers, which implies a natural propensity to use social networks. As more organizations continue to jump into social media, soon a critical mass will be reached and all the other companies will be social media marketing agencies forced to adopt social media for business matter. The opening to social media by companies is a rapid process; for this reason it is crucial to address risks related to the exposure to new threats related to the new paradigm. Social media offer important business advantages to companies, but they also dramatically enlarge their attack surface. In order to mitigate the security risks, organizations must establish and deploy effective social media usage policies. Unfortunately, in many cases, companies simply limit their action is to prohibiting the access to social media for its employees, a decision that could cause significant disadvantage of the organization respect its competitors.

Organization Social Media Security Policy

Now that we have highlighted the principal threats for organizations that open their business to the social networks, let’s see how a security policy can address the major social media security threats. An organization must institute a policy to regulate employee access and establish guidelines for appropriate behavior of staffers when dealing with social media. Policies must specifically address security issues, but not only those! A social media policy has to define the correct posture of the company on the social media by establishing, for example, what can and cannot be shared and communicated through these search and social media marketing powerful platforms. Once a policy is adopted by the organization, it needs to be continuously reviewed and, if necessary, updated and enforced according to the evolution of cyber threats and new needs of the company.The above items must be properly addressed by organizations that intend to protect their assets from threats exploiting social media as an attack vector. The first line of protection against threats over social networks must be implemented in an end-user machine; this means that employees must be trained to adopt a secure posture to protect the devices they use to access social media accounts. It is essential to educate users on the best practices to follow in order to protect their machines (desktops, laptops, mobile devices). Users must protect their desktop and mobile devices by enabling password-protected screen savers and locking them when they walk away from them. All the devices must have screensaver timeouts; in this way, if the user leaves the system, the password-protected screensaver comes up after a specific interval of time, preventing unauthorized physical accesses. Do not forget that a threat agent could also be an insider or any social media marketing applications occasional guest that accesses the organization or that has the possibility to access the user’s device left unguarded. An unauthorized access to a user’s computer or laptop could allow an ill-intentioned person to install a RAT or any other spyware and harvest user credentials. Similar malware could also allow an attacker to impersonate victims over social media by stealing their credentials. Another element to address in a security policy for social media is the authentication of employees to the social network accounts. Take care to separate the use of a personal account from the corporate account; their simultaneous use could generate confusion and result in data leakage. Organizations have to enable two-factor authentication for the accounts of the principal social network they use. Another critical concern is the password security; employees must choose strong passwords, avoiding to share and not properly protect them.

why security awareness is crucial for employees

People are now the weakest link in the security chain. The latest security technology may protect core systems, but it cannot protect against employees giving away information on social networks or using their own, less secure, mobile devices for business purposes. "It is a myth that technology will protect you," says Tony Dyhouse, cybersecurity director at the UK Technology Strategy Board's ICT Knowledge Transfer Network. "Those who attack us have no wish to spend a lot of time and money defeating our technology. They attack the user, which is much easier." It has become increasingly important to embed ICT security awareness marketing using social media at all levels of an organisation. "The most at-risk personnel are uninformed, innocent and unaware employees," says Kevin Bailey, research director, European security software, at research company IDC. "Many external attacks – more than 60% – target employees via social engineering," he says. "They were opportunistic, exploiting activities such as unexpected communication through email and social media." IDC reported a growth of more than 40% in the uptake of smart devices during 2011–12, compared with a flat PC market. Employees are increasingly using their own devices for work, and much of this activity is out of their employer's control. "A recent survey shows that over 30% of respondents believe that BYOD [bring your own device] is already happening informally in their organisations," says Bailey. Many people are familiar with dodgy-looking emails purporting to be from a bank and they know not to click on links. The latest threats are much more sophisticated and personal, including "spearphishing", whereby the attacker uses los angeles social media marketing information gleaned from social media to personalise an email to an individual. People are much more likely to open an email that has specific personal information in the header. They may even open