Social Media and Security: Keeping Your Business Safe  

Social media security should be taken seriously if you want your company to thrive, your customers to remain safe online, and your brand representation to remain on top form.

Unfortunately, there are people out there that may impersonate your brand or hack your social media accounts. If you want to keep your business safe, read on to find how to do so and what can happen if you don’t.

Potential Threats

The main threats that can harm your reputation and business are:

• Fake links which look like your website, but are actually a downloadable malware
• Impersonation accounts which could sell fake products to potential customers, leaving them unhappy with your brand
• Impersonating profiles of staff members to gain private and personal data
• Communication of wrong information which could affect the stock price
• Hacking of your social media profiles to gain confidential data or post false information

The above threats can happen to any business, even small businesses, so you should never believe your business is immune to threats. Instead, you should follow safety advice to ensure your social media is safe from hackers and trolls online.

The Cost to Your Business

Unfortunately, social media scams such as the ones above can damage a company’s reputation and may lead to financial loss. Any customers who have fallen for this scam will have less trust in the company and will be likely to inform others, meaning many more people are less likely to trust your real profiles and website. You may even deal with negative press over the issue. If you haven’t taken the necessary steps to keep your social media accounts safe, you could be liable for paying back disgruntled customers.

Best Social Media Safety Practices

There are several simple steps you can take today to implement a safer and more secure way of working with social media, here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Change passwords regularly, and make them randomised
2. Form a company social media policy that must be signed by each employee
3. Regularly search for your brand name on social media to ensure there are no fake accounts
4. Never list vacation times of management on any social media accounts, whether this be your own personal account of your business account
5. Update your privacy settings regularly, especially if employees have left the company
6. Permanently delete unused accounts
7. Inform your customers if you are aware of any dangers or fake accounts associated with your company

If you want to keep your business safe from fake profiles, consider using online brand protection services for businesses. FraudWatch International can protect your company by detecting and removing impersonating profiles from social media, as well as in many other ways. Check out their website for more information on how they can help you to keep your business safe.

Being safe online is important for all businesses. Social media is a fantastic, free tool that can drive sales and improve customer retention. Follow the above steps to maintain safety and your company’s reputation.