Don’t Overlook Social Media Security: Protecting Your Brand

Social media has emerged as a significant yet often overlooked part of the attack surface for many businesses. Understanding where your brand is exposed online is crucial to safeguarding these channels effectively. A compromised social media account can severely damage a company’s reputation and trust, opening the door to misinformation, phishing campaigns, propaganda, and other malicious activities. Such incidents can inflict long-lasting harm on a brand’s image. For this reason, proactive management and robust security measures for social media accounts are essential.

River Security’s Active Focus managed service, paired with our expert penetration testers, takes a proactive approach to identifying and securing your brand’s social media presence. We help locate all associated accounts, test for vulnerabilities—often exploiting breaches or leaked credentials—and identify fake or unmanaged accounts. These rogue accounts, which can damage brand integrity, should either be deactivated or brought under proper governance.

Safeguarding your social media accounts involves numerous tips and strategies, but at a bare minimum, enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is essential. Modern social media accounts are often linked to personal or private individual profiles, which can complicate management within a corporate environment. Nevertheless, the first step in enabling MFA—and improving overall security—is simply identifying all the social media accounts associated with your brand or organization. Without a clear inventory, securing them becomes an uphill battle.

Once SoME (“Social Media”) accounts have been identified, it’s essential to ensure that the individuals managing them receive targeted and up-to-date awareness training. This training should cover critical topics such as recognizing and avoiding social engineering tactics, handling varying market sentiments, creating strong passwords, enabling MFA, and implementing other practical security measures. Equipping account managers with this knowledge strengthens the overall security posture and helps mitigate risks effectively.

Managing social media accounts also facilitates the use of a powerful technique called “sentiment monitoring.” By leveraging machine learning to analyze incoming and outgoing communications, organizations can identify potential risks such as disgruntled employees, threats of attacks, and other alarming behaviors that might otherwise go unnoticed.

In conclusion, companies must not overlook the risks associated with social media accounts and must prioritize their protection and management. Adopting proactive measures like MFA, staff training, and sentiment monitoring can go a long way in safeguarding a company’s reputation and ensuring its continued success.