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For many businesses, social media is now just a fact of life – a major sales channel that puts products directly into the laps of customers. It’s rare for a business to not have some kind of social media presence, but along with the benefits of being more connected to customers comes the risks of being exposed to people that you don’t want to get attention from such as hackers and online criminals. Here are a few tips that can keep your organisation safe.
Use a VPN
Your businesses’ social media account is a goldmine of potentially useful information for cybercriminals or just good old fashioned fraudsters. Everything from bank details and passwords to personal details of employees and company performance can be found there, so it must be kept safe. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a server separate from your own that you can connect to in order to access the internet, and it makes your internet connection much more secure and much harder to track. Think of it as an extra layer of security between you and the bad guys, enabling them to track your activity back to your VPN and no further. Paid-for VPNs also typically have a high level of encryption and security provided by large tech companies, which may be better than your own network’s protection.
Pay attention to privacy
On a business social media page, it’s likely that the user won’t know the majority of people who interact with it personally, so it’s harder to manually spot suspicious people or activity than it is for an individual on their personal page. One important point is to keep your privacy settings up to date, so you’re always sure that you’re not oversharing details about your business with fans, you’re changing your passwords regularly and you have all possible security measures in place like backup addresses and two-factor authentication. You should also train your staff to spot fraudulent messages and phishing, so they don’t inadvertently become the back door.
Protect yourself
No matter how diligent you are, there’s always the chance you’ll still be a victim of an attack, and you don’t want to be defenceless if you are. Achieving cybersecurity certification with IASME issued Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus, can ensure you have basic cyber hygiene and protect your business from most sources of threats. By ensuring this level of protection is in place you can be sure you have done all you can to protect your business, customers and suppliers.