The writers here at Digital Information World work hard to help you build up your social media marketing account. Obviously, you’ll never get anywhere without their advice. But before you get too deep into your social marketing plan you need to consider what you can do to increase the security of the accounts you build. Why work so hard to build them up over years when a hacker can tear them down in a day?
There are a number of examples where a hacker breaks into a branded social media account to harvest data, or just have some LOLs. Here are some proactive steps that you can take to keep your social media account secure, and lower your chances of getting hacked dramatically.
Brute Force hacks stopped by strong passwords
Brute force hacks are commonly caused by people choosing very poor passwords. This was rumoured to be the cause of the infamous hacking incident called The Fappening where individual accounts were hacked. The rumours that iCloud was hacked weren’t true.To show you another example of how people and businesses still don’t understand strong passwords, a recent Gizmodo article looked at the most popular passwords still being used:
- 123456
- password
- 12345
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 123456789
- 1234
- baseball
- dragon
- football
Creating a variety of strong passwords
Passwords are important, but even more important is having lots of passwords. If you are using the same password over and over, no matter how strong, if a hacker gets hold of it they can now get into any of your accounts that use it.A common way for your password to be stolen is through a man in the middle attack. You’ll never know it’s happened to you until strange purchases start showing up in your bank records from online properties you’re signed up for!
To create and store them outside of your brain try using a password management system. Examples include:
Each one allows you to create all the passwords you want, store them easily, and some can even enter them for you. I personally use LastPass, but your needs may vary. Here’s a quick guide on how to make handling your passwords simpler.
Click image to enlarge.
Infographic courtesy of: f-secure.
Protect your business accounts with remote workers
The mobile landscape has changed work forever. You no longer sit at one workstation exclusively on the company network and do your job. You’re working online at conferences, in meetings at other offices, in hotels, at home on your laptop, on your smartphone, and at coffee shops.The days where you could rely on your in-house IT team to keep you secure all the time are over. When you’re out of the office, but connecting via WiFi or your home connection, you need protection.
The easiest way to get this protection is with a VPN. With one you will:
- Encrypt all traffic going into and out of your computer
- Hide your IP address and location
- Give yourself an added layer of password protection
- Use it on laptops, tablets and smartphones
Click image to enlarge.
Give community managers social media dashboard access
A team setting for social media management is becoming common as companies grow their social presence past what one person can handle. With accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Google+ it can be easier to consolidate all of these into one place with a single dashboard where you only have to give out one login access to your team members.Examples of social media dashboard tools include:
I list Hootsuite first as it has the widest range of social platforms it can integrate, but the others all have their strengths and weaknesses. Now when you have a problem, like a firing/quitting/layoff, you have one password to change instead of many. This minimizes your insider risk, which is a serious problem that few consider.
Author bio:
Marcus is an online security enthusiast who writes over on the Best VPN Providers online security blog. You’ll find an new article from him there every Wednesday on cyber-security related topics. You can also follow the @BestVPNs on Twitter for updates every day!
