Social media is such a fundamental tool for business marketing these days, so you should be paying attention to how you protect it from security risks. Check out our top 8 ways that you mitigate most of the risks.

Create a Social Media Policy

Ensure that all your employees adopt best practices when using social media on behalf of your business by setting up a social media policy.

You might include information on

  • Creating secure passwords and stipulating how often they should be changed
  • How to monitor and engage with social brand mentions
  • Identifying unusual behaviour of social media feeds
  • How to avoid and deal with spam, phishing and errors
  • How to steer clear of malicious software
  • Coping with trolling and attacks
  • What content is appropriate to share on company social media

Train Your Staff

Reinforce your social media policy by providing regular staff training.

Training will allow you to see where there are potential issues or gaps in your online security. It will also give you the opportunity to arm your staff with tools that make them able to spot suspicious activity and avoid human error. Undertaking training allows you to expand on your social media policy and walk your colleagues through the dos and don’ts in relation to how you want your brand illustrated online.

Limit Social Media Access

Only allow levels of access appropriate to the job each person is doing on your social media feeds.

Don’t give someone more access and permission than is necessary, and conversely don’t give someone too little access if they need more. Especially important don’t make anyone other than the business owner admin access to the account, lest an unscrupulous employee locks them out of the account. And whatever permission level you allow a user, don’t give them access until they have reviewed and agreed to your Social Media Policy and undertaken some training.

Set Up an Approval System

Use a tool like Hootsuite so that someone with authority can review and approve messages before they are posted to your social media channels.

If you are giving access to multiple people from different areas of your business, and particularly if you are giving access to outside contractors, it is important that someone take responsibility to review and approve all communication before it is published. This way you can avoid being the star of horrible stories like Z-Burger was.

Monitor Accounts

Keep your account active and check your feeds regularly, particularly if you are not actively posting content at the moment – unattended accounts a low-hanging fruit for would-be cybercriminals and hackers.

Many businesses register more social media accounts than they regularly use perhaps to make sure they have reserved all possible combinations of username to that match or exemplify their brand. These dormant accounts are targeted by people who want to use them for malicious reasons. Be vigilant and investigate anything that doesn’t look right.  

Use Security Technology

A super-powered form of defence can be provided by technology most of which will alert you of activity that is out of place or unexpected.

Not only can these technologies identify threatening content on your own feeds, but they can also help recognise negative content that is targeting your brand. Take a look at what ZeroFOX has to offer it even integrates into Hootsuite, which we mentioned earlier.

Perform Regular Audits

Regularly audit your social media settings as threats are constantly evolving and so what might be best practice today may not be in the future. The social media companies will also adapt to different security and usage trends and will provide new and altered settings as time goes on.

An audit, at least every three months should include:

  • Privacy Settings
  • Access and publishing privileges for each user
  • Recent social media threat
  • Your social media policy and training schedule


Password Hygiene

Passwords are quite literally the key to your digital world and bad passwords give that key to cybercriminals and hackers. You should have clear guidelines on what a strong password is for your users and ensure that they regularly change them. Even better, make sure that you enable and enforce the use of two-factor authentication when available.

Nearly a quarter of office workers use the same password for multiple services and logins – one data breach with that password included, means that their accounts are vulnerable. By training and enforcing password rules you lessen the risk that an employee will unwittingly allow bad actors access to your vital social media accounts. And you can almost completely mitigate all of these risks by enabling two-factor authentication.

If you feel you need more help with any of these tips or you’re experiencing other security issues with your social media presence then you can give us a call we’ll be happy to help .

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