The advent and popularity of social media took the world by storm. It offered opportunities for progress to everyone, including the general public, entrepreneurs, established businesses, and hackers. The attackers have also moved from websites to social media accounts as there is more public to fall for their malicious tricks and scams.
Social media threats have become more common. Due to this, more business accounts and their followers are falling for the tricks. Ensuring optimized cybersecurity and proper digital security and risk protection measures can save business and their followers.
Get into the details of this article to explore common social media threats businesses must watch out for and take appropriate risk protection measures.
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Top 6 Social Media Threats for Businesses
Social media presence is inevitable for business setups in this fast-paced era. However, it is not a smooth path; it disguises too many pitfalls. Hackers and attackers now use social media to launch attacks and achieve their malicious purposes. Developing awareness about such attacks and implementing risk protection measures is more than necessary now.
Here are the most prevalent social media threats business setups must be aware of to protect their reputation and target audience.
1. Data Breach
Data breaches are the basic and most common social media threat for business setups. Business accounts develop a fan following by appealing to the public’s sentiments and offering the required services. The hackers see the immense following as a chance to gain illegal benefits.
They launch various attacks to hack an account and steal followers’ data. The internal employees of the business may also leak data and cause a breach. Most online businesses hire digital risk protection services to let experts monitor and mitigate data breaches and protect their reputations.
2. Executive Spear Phishing
Executive spear phishing is the next common social media threat for business accounts. The attackers spoof the messages and online presence of an authoritative business figure and create a fake email or social account. Through this, they send messages to the executives.
The executives often fall for the trick and fail to recognize the fake account. They are tricked into clicking on a link with malware or some other virus that enables account-wide attacks. Offering training to executives against such cyber-attacks is inevitable. Moreover, it is equally crucial to implement risk protection and keep such threats at bay.
3. Fake Giveaways
Fake giveaways are another notable social media threat to business accounts. Such a threat can target a business or its followers. In the case of business, the attackers may launch giveaways with collaboration opportunities for other businesses. They may approach a business with a plan and share malware to launch an attack.
On the other hand, in the case of followers, the attackers may impersonate the giveaway from the business. They may trick the followers into sharing email accounts and other information or make some payments. Constant social media monitoring through risk protection practices is necessary to avoid such risks and threats.
Also Read : IoT & Cybersecurity: Safeguarding Connected Device in the Digital Age
4. Account Takeovers
Account takeover is the worst social media threat online, and other business setups must watch out. Such a threat turns into a successful attack when a business account has weak security protocols and compromised credentials. The attackers can hack the account, change its password, and use it to engage with your followers.
The attackers are always on the lookout for accounts with millions of followers and weak security protocols. Such an attack taints the reputation of the business. The hackers might demand ransomware to return the account. Otherwise, you will have to create a new account and build it up from scratch.
5. Likejacking
Likejacking is one of the trickiest social media threats businesses must be aware of. Such an attack usually targets general traffic on social media, but the attackers might use the name of your business. For instance, the attackers might share a post with some attractive offer from your business that you might not know.
The user traffic will click on the post to know more about the offer and your business and might end up installing malware. The attackers will be able to steal the data of users by leveraging your name. They might even hide a like button for their account under the “know more” section and trick the users to grow their followers.
6. Brand Impersonation
Brand impersonation is the last yet most damaging social media threat businesses must watch out for. Social media is a vast space with billions of accounts. It is quite easy for anyone to impersonate a business or public account. The culprits may take information and images from the original account and post them on their fake account.
They may also reach out to interested people to extort money or other favors. Even when a brand or public figure is not directly involved, it can seriously harm their reputation and launch a probe against them. You can hire digital risk protection services to monitor social media threats and protect your brand reputation.
7. Social Engineering
An attacker can call employees to trick them into sending private data, providing login credentials, or transferring money. In a complex attack, the fraudster may pretend to be a high-level manager to trick the target into transferring money to his account.
8. Bullying
Social media makes it possible to maintain social contacts from the comfort of your own home. For most users, this is a positive experience. It is less positive for people who are socially excluded through bullying. While bullying used to be limited to a specific environment, such as school or work, today bullying victims can hardly escape their tormentors. They follow them everywhere on social media. “Ordinary” bullying turns into cyberbullying, which occurs relatively frequently, especially among young people. Since the perpetrators can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, the threshold of inhibition is significantly reduced and the attacks are often particularly malicious .
9. The internet doesn’t forget
Trends and hot topics on social networks change rapidly, but the internet has a long memory. In principle, users should assume that nothing they publish on the Internet will ever completely disappear. It can be particularly problematic for politicians and other public figures when their old social media posts are scrutinized.
Even Internet users who are not in the media spotlight must be aware that their public appearance on the Internet can work against them. During job interviews, it is now common practice to thoroughly check applicants’ social media profiles, sometimes going back a long way into the past. There are even agencies that specialize in this. Even outside of work, no one can rely on their own social media past remaining hidden. Current or future parents must be prepared for the fact that their children will eventually become interested in what they previously posted on social networks.
10. Hoaxes
The open nature of social media means that anyone can distribute any content they want. The right thing often stands next to the wrong thing, and untruths are not always easy for users to recognize. Sensational news or facts in particular spread extremely quickly on social media, regardless of whether they are true or fictional. When corrections and corrections are published, they typically do not reach nearly as large an audience. For the vast majority of users, even outrageous nonsense remains unchallenged.
Although false reports do not pose an immediate threat to individuals, in the long term they run the risk of making absurd ideas part of their worldview. Social media users are therefore well advised to question information critically and not to believe every claim.
Is your business at risk of social media attacks?
The hackers might be planning some attack in silence. You can only know about it and stay safe from it with proper digital risk protection. Do not take it too easy, as social media attacks can make your business go bankrupt. Get experts from cybersecurity companies on board to take appropriate measures and protect your social media presence.
