Social media is a solid way to elevate your brand and spread the word about your products or services. If your business is interested in using social media to attract more clients, there are a few important safety details you should consider.
Social media security policy
Put a policy in place and make sure all employees adhere to the guidelines. This type of policy serves as a tool for social media use. For best practices to help you put together a policy, read this TechTarget article. Size doesn’t matter when it comes to online crime, and smaller businesses are easier targets due to limited or no in-house IT support. Teach employees about your security requirements and explain anything that might be unclear.
Here is what your policy should include:
- Which applications can be loaded on a company computer and which are forbidden.
- Proper usage of a company’s computer and internet – a safe, secure, and reliable Internet connection is important.
- An email encryption solution to protect your sensitive information
- Who is in charge if employees have questions about the social media security policy or computer security in general
- In your security policy, cover popular social media sites you’re using for promotion like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more
- Encourage employees to limit the amount of personal information they share online for their safety and your company’s safety.
Educate employees
Employees should be aware of all the possible threats and unwanted outcomes. For example, no clicking on unfamiliar links. Social media blogging and posting for the company should have guidelines about what information is okay and who has authority to post. Appoint an employee to review content before it’s posted. Another set of eyes is always a good strategy.
Endpoint protection
Your company should make sure that they have a proper endpoint protection solution for both laptop and smartphones. That would include managed data protection from malware and viruses which contains five layers. Each layer of protection should provide constant packet, linkage, rules compliance, signature searching, and behavior-based analysis to identify and protect against viruses, worms, Trojans, and other potentially harmful attacks.
Protect the sensitive data
Any sort of data that provides sales insights, financial information, and customer information should be a TOP SECRET. If customers find out that their personal data was misused, they will immediately terminate their interactions with your business. Additional information such as trade secrets and upcoming products are also a high priority to keep safe.
Enhance network visibility
With better network visibility, you can optimize overall application performance. You can filter critical application traffic to the proper tools and better track when each application is used while not overloading any of your application monitoring tools. This stops potential hackers from taking over sensitive social media information.
Learn which social networking sites are safe
Employees should have access only to the trustworthy websites. More precisely, they only should visit social media sites that are allowed by the social media security policy.
Flexible and multi-dimensional approach
Employees should develop a strategy to take care of all possible risks and keep up with the latest trends. Improve security whenever possible by monitoring, analyzing and collecting the data.
Cybersecurity strategies protect information systems from theft or damage to the hardware, the software and to the information on them.
Social media can be important for both private and business worlds. Follow these guidelines to assure that you and your employees are using social media platforms securely and appropriately.
About the Author
Annabelle Short is a writer, blogger at Content Blossom Blogging, a seamstress in her free time and a mother of two. She splits her time between London and Los Angeles. Annabelle has experience in leading and managing different project teams.
