5 Social Media Security Threats Confronting Enterprises

Chennai: Man is a social being and cannot live in aloofness. Uprising of Social media like Twitter, Facebook, and LikedIn added ease to our social senses. It is this prowess of social media increasingly becoming the platform for entrepreneurs to engage with customers, to establish brands and for communicating information to the rest of the world. While it all seems to be on sunnier side, there are shady risks involved in using social media that range from deterioration of brand image to exposing information to inviting libels. Here are some of the social media threats that confront enterprises as compiled by Network World.

Lack of Social Media Policy

It’s very necessary to design the social media policies for all organizations. The authority should make it clear to the employees on who can access the social networking sites and what they can post.  The enterprises should train employees so that they can have a clear idea on the goals and parameters of company’s social media initiative. Otherwise there will be utter chaos and confusions.

Social Engineering

Social engineering was there on dais much before the arrival of computer networks. Undoubedtly it’s the social media that made social interactions more comfortable. Considering Facebook ,Twitter,Myspace and other social medias  as a reliable medium  people often have a tendency to reveal their personal information .There are quite a few who even discuss their company projects with unknown connections from various social networking sites, which could invite disaster.

Social media when used to defame the employees

Nobody is perfect, people tend to make mistakes. Office related matters should be constrained inside it. An imprudent comment in a work related social media account is dangerous as it leads to unforeseen circumstances and can spoil the office work environment.

 Social Networking sites

Hackers inject malicious code into a social networking site by going directly to the source code. It is generally done through inside advertisements or via third party apps. Due to 140 characters Tweet limit on Twitter hackers easily be fools the user by providing the option of shortened URLs for the malicious websites which on a visit will extract all personal information about the user. Adding to it the malware infections raises many folds due to retweeting the post on twitter.

Mobile Apps

Rise of social media and revolution in mobile computing are intertwined. Employees on their own or on company’s smart devices end up downloading several apps, sometimes more than what they had bargained for, in turn inviting several cyber threats. In early March this year, Google has removed 60 apps carrying malicious software from its Android Market. Some of the malware are ferocious that easily disclosed the user's private information to the third party, replicate itself on other devices, destroy user data or even impersonate the device owner.