Of course, the significance of online media cannot be just explained. It has broken down cultural and geographic borders. The web is now empowering people to connect in a meaningful manner. In fact, the online media is continually offering new opportunities for every business to flourish. However, companies should realize that there are certain risks associated with online reputation, especially in social media. On the downside, social media is filled with opportunists that hide behind fake profiles so as to hack people as well as companies. If you have a site or rather an online payment platform, it is important that you perform a risk assessment on the cyber security systems. Well, this is very crucial because customers trust you with their sensitive or personal information. What a lot of businesses don’t realize is that they have to be careful of the risks on social media pages apart from their websites.
Evaluating possible risks
A majority of people have learned ways to spot the dangerous emails now. Trained eyes detect the spam emails almost immediately. However, this is a little complicated on social media. Perhaps, it is not easy to spot a bot on Twitter or Facebook.
To combat, this, you must evaluate all the potential risks for all your social media pages. While social media may seem harmless, one out of five phishing attempts are coming from Facebook, according to studies.
You must consider how much risky it is to have your employees accessing social media sites on your company property. As the risks are subtle, it can be challenging to protect the assets of the company from direct attacks from outside as well as from accidental losses. A few biggest risks which come from working in social media typically include:
• Identify theft
• Reputation damage
• Violation of laws and regulations
• Confidential information being disclosed accidentally
To start with, find out what your employees are saying regarding their jobs online. Provided your employees are posting information or tweeting in the public sphere, think of creating a social media policy which addresses this risk to your security systems. Well, this is the perfect way to safeguard your company as well as your employees.
Also, consider a reputation management plan. This may sound more like a negation of bad publicity. But, there can be several implications if someone on a particular social media team tends to post the wrong thing. Safeguarding your company as well as its assets from accidental or misguided posts is critical.
Embracing work-life separation
It is vital to embrace social media as not doing so might only hurt you. To protect your business, creating a plan which separates social media from private work sphere is imperative.
You can physically separate your company from social media. Create a second network for your employees for the use of social media; this helps keep the attackers away from the private company network.
It is also a good idea to encourage employees to get connected to this public network using personal devices. Don’t put any device that is registered to the firm on this network.
Besides, when protecting your online reputation, you must work to create a chain of approval to review the future social media posts.
Online media is a big asset; however, but it can be a liability as well. So, act smart and have a plan to protect your business from internal accidents and outside threats.