Keeping Your Business (And Customers) Safe on Social Media by Guest Cassie Phillips
Social A few decades ago, reaching your customers directly came pretty much only in person or over the phone. Indirect advertising, still prevalent today, must now compete with a much more living and convenient means of reaching out to target audiences. Social media has quickly become the future of customer interaction outside of physically going to meet with people.
Unfortunately, social media is not without its risks both to your business and to your potential or loyal customers. There are two primary types of risks you’ll need to be concerned with. The first and more obvious risk is your company’s image. While it can be tempting to heavily interact with customers on media such as Twitter and Facebook, miscommunication can quickly lead to angry or disinterested customers.
The other big risk is in the safety of data. Because anyone with an internet capable device can view your company’s pages, those pages can quickly become the target of hackers and other criminals looking to defraud you or your customers of their private information. Phishing attempts and other scams can quickly lead to disaster for both parties.
The life of your company depends on how well you’re able to adapt to these new threats and opportunities. Fortunately, there are a few simple things your business can do to stay ahead of the curve and maintain a safe, healthy environment on your social media outlets.
Good Practices
Remember back in grade school when your teachers used to go on and on about using your inside voice? The internet, and more specifically social media, is very similar. The right sort of etiquette—or netiquette—is important to maintain at all times if you want a good image for your business. But what does that have to do with security?
People get angry online in the same way they do offline. It may be immature, but it happens. Unlike in person, it can be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to tell what type of person it is who is accessing your page. Some users may even have knowledge about password theft and other forms of hacking. At the very least, good behavior can help prevent incidents of revenge.
It also serves as an important note to keep your company’s social media account passwords strong. While using an easy-to-remember password may seem convenient, a weak password can quickly be guessed or cracked by someone determined enough. It only takes a few minutes to cause lasting damage to your company, as the security breach will send a message to your customers that you may not be safe to deal with.
Stolen accounts are frequently used in phishing scams as well. They usually appear in the form of a link posted by the stolen account that allegedly leads to your website or some other convincing clone that asks for login details or simply installs malware on the unsuspecting individual.
A strong password consisting of at least eight characters should contain a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters along with numbers and symbols. It should be changed regularly and not contain singular words from the dictionary. Passphrases are also handy as they tend to be longer and difficult to guess but easy to remember.
Avoid sharing access to your company’s social media account with too many employees. More employees accessing your accounts can lead to a security problem as there is an increasing chance one of their devices will encounter malware.
Be sure to monitor disgruntled employees or revoke access from anyone who quits or is fired. Inside hacks can be devastating to your company’s image and may lead to problems for your customers as well.
You’ll also need to do some moderating from time to time. Inflammatory comments or bad links from “customers” can be a big problem if not dealt with swiftly. Simply deleting these comments will suffice most of the time.
Security Software
Although it’s generally best to limit the number of devices accessing your social media accounts for the business, any devices that do have access should also have certain forms of security software installed. The two most relevant items are an anti-virus program and a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
An anti-virus program is standard on many PCs, but not necessarily on mobile devices. For a small business, you can get by with free personal license apps such as Avast or Panda, but if you’re installing on multiple devices, you’ll likely want the professional versions. Paid anti-virus software offers extra security and support to help deal with malware.
A VPN helps protect your devices with access by connecting you to a remote server which encrypts data sent and received and hides your IP address. This helps prevent criminals from sending you bad data over public WiFi and keeps you anonymous from hackers. VPNs, such as ExpressVPN, typically cost anywhere from $5-15 per month.
Both forms of software help keep your business from losing control of your social media accounts. By far, the number one safety concern on social media is account theft, and it should be your primary concern when planning for security.
Other Tips
Aside from software and treating your customers well on social media sites, be sure to keep an eye on email accounts your company and/or employees use. Emails can be an easy source of malware or scams that will end up with the same result: stolen accounts. Any suspicious email activity should be handled with care, even if the message appears to be from someone within the company; failure to do so can compromise not just your social media accounts, but other data on your business’s devices.
If your company shares a single network, be on the lookout for intrusions. A good WiFi password helps, as will firewall software to monitor suspicious connections.
Is your business doing what it can to keep its social media secure? What practices have you implemented to that degree? Share below.
About the Author: Cassie Phillips is a technology blogger. Her specialties include internet safety, business netiquette and social media. She is a strong advocate for security software and keeping your devices up to date in order to avoid cyberattacks and maintain regular business operations.
The post Keeping Your Business (And Customers) Safe on Social Media by Guest Cassie Phillips appeared first on Judy Davis The Direction Diva.
