There is no longer any debate- social networking is here to stay. It is evolving into what is called social business software.
Workers of all ages are using social media as well, though not just facebook and twitter. Sites like Linkedin are also very popular.
And, of course, an increasing number of businesses are adopting social networking strategies for maketing and research purposes.
Technology tends to make great strides forwards without considering safety issues. Social networking is not exception.
Security and Privacy
When discussing security and privacy in regard to social networking, the two have separate definitions. Security is generally defined on how well a site or company thwart hackers and and malware attacks on their firewalls. Privacy has more to do with how much information a social networking site collects and how it shares that data.
Privacy is a tricky issue, because users have the ability to control what information they place on a site and can use site provided settings to control how much of the information can be seen and by whom.
Common sense Attacking
Hackers are a threat to security, but not as dangerous as a con artist in the digital age. The difference between a hacker and a con artist is that the former beaks in, whereas simply persuades you to let him in.
Con artists have a number of well known methods of acquiring peoples passwords, personal information and more. They try to trick you into giving up sensitive information by posing as a legitimate entity or by gaining your trust.
Personality hijacking is a related tactic, which involves creating an online presence for someone else without their knowledge or consent.
This can be done if you have basic information about the person. With hijacking, a cyber criminal can assume a false identity and damage someone's reputation by sending embarrassing messages, posting unacceptable comments and a few others.
These tactics can be frightening for an individual, but in the case of an entire company it can lead to as serious problem. Consider what will happen if a con artist acquires an employee's email account, dug up the company secrets or passwords. Damage can also be done if, for example, someone created a false identity and posed as a company employee on a site such as Linkedin and was able to connect with and get information from actual employees.
Protecting your Business
At the corporate level, maintaining antivirus software and keeping applications up-to-date goes a Long toward fighting malware, although this will do little for combating social engineering scams.
But as daunting as the task of managing social networking related security issues may seem, protecting your business from most social networking enabled attacks and vulnerabilities is mostly a matter of education. Employees need to know basic tactics for avoiding scams and malware.
An easy tactic concerns username and password strengths. Basically, you need to use different passwords for different accounts. If you use the same password for everything from online banking to your company accounts , all a criminal has to do is figure out a single password to gain access to your entire online life. You should also check privacy settings on any social network you join.
Other important strategies may include logging out of every session on a social networking site.
Never let a web browser on a shared machine save form information otherwise, next user can simply log into a site as you.
