How to Combine Brand Preservation & Marketing on Social Media

By Mfidie Last updated Feb 17, 2023

It has never been more crucial for CMOs to safeguard their expenditures and, in turn, safeguard the brands they have worked so hard to establish, given that businesses spend an estimated 7.5% of overall profits on marketing.

Attackers looking to take advantage of interactions on social networking channels and elsewhere pose a constant threat to today’s brands. Attacks take many different forms, ranging from leveraging your efforts to advance their own objectives to illegally selling versions of your items and diverting visitors away from that and your online assets.

Social media is one of the most frequently used attack vectors due to its pervasiveness in business-to-consumer communications. The protection of brands is currently being led by marketing departments. Marketing teams need to take a security-first stance in order to increase their investment return and offer value across the organization. Without putting themselves or the organization in danger, they can gain from social media. But only then.

Authorizing Without Increasing Risk

According to some surveys, 80% of leaders said that using social media platforms for commercial purposes puts their firms at medium to high risk. Social media is where a lot of brand protection starts. Social media is a crucial resource that no modern company should be without. However, they come with hazards including social engineering, the risk to brand and reputation, and worries about data privacy.

Even though it is not the topic of the article here, you need to know that hacking attacks on your social media profiles could be linked (not always the case though) with the same actions pointed to your website. That, if you have a website (which is a must in today’s conducting of a corporate business) built via Wix for which a rundown of the best Wix pricing plans has been done. This is helpful, making sure you pay close attention not to be in for some unwelcome fee surprises if you sign up for a certain plan. Data theft, computer viruses, and phishing are common forms of web security risks to your site.

Back to social media. Due to the increased risk, information compliance and security departments are being pushed to develop strict policies limiting the usage of social media at work. The implementation of these regulations frequently results in restrictions that are so severe that they prevent innovation. Security teams find it simpler and less dangerous to simply say no. Unluckily, that also entails passing up a ton of chances to expand the scope of your company. It is also critical to keep in mind that attackers may still use popular social media platforms to target your clients even if your business is not active there.

Teams must proactively safeguard client interactions and foil attackers in their tracks to strike a balance between marketing and brand protection. A general two-stage process is as follows:

Safeguarding your profiles on social media and other recognized assets,
Safeguarding against unidentified dangers including social engineering assaults and third-party vulnerabilities.

Safeguarding the Existing

Although it may seem simple to secure what is already known, roughly half of businesses do not have deep transparency over their digital assets. In other terms, they are unaware of the location of all of their data. Due to the quick uptake of cloud-based platforms, this issue is only becoming more difficult to solve. A lot more needs to be protected, even though corporate leaders may well be fully cognizant of their public social media profiles. This contains accounts owned by specific employees, sponsored individuals, and significant stakeholders. Attackers frequently target high-profile ‘prey’, such as executive-level staff social media accounts. A CMO may be the target of an attacker who manipulates their social media pages in an effort to conduct a catastrophic social engineering campaign against the CMO’s clients.

Knowing where your assets are and making sure they are protected via your security policies are the first steps in securing them. A security policy can only be effective if it is correctly implemented; this does not entail placing limitations that obstruct customer contact. Instead, those potentially sensitive assets should be covered by account-level protections. This makes sure that before going live, all departing posts and communications are checked in real-time to see if they comply with your regulations. All outbound communications will also be archived at the same time.

Teams from every department will be able to use third-party digital assets with confidence if all of them are identified and included in your company’s information security plan. This gives marketing teams more influence and control over managing brand reputation.

Defending Against Unknowns

Brand security on social media channels can only be accomplished by automation, ideally enhanced by the application of machine learning, given the dozens of millions (or more) of false social media accounts. To spot unforeseen hazards, brands need a mechanism to keep an eye on a variety of social media platforms. Threats can include counterfeit sales, referrals to dubious websites, and theft of intellectual property.

You need to be made aware of any suspicious activity as soon as possible, for instance, if a malicious person is using a fraudulent account to pose as a member of your marketing division and conduct social engineering assaults on your clients. If you discover far too late, you might be held responsible, endangering the reputation of your entire brand.

It is necessary to continuously monitor social media networks and the Internet as a whole to spot malicious users. You cannot defend against something you cannot see, but quick detection makes it possible to spot impersonations and false accounts before they cause harm. However, there are other dangers that businesses should be aware of besides the public Internet.

A large portion of stolen property ends up on the dark web, a covert version of the internet that cybercriminals use to trade and sell the looted property. Employees or clients may be tricked into providing private information, such as login passwords or payment information, by a hacker using social media. They will then sell their data on the dark web, leaving their victims with significant financial losses.

Machine learning is the most efficient method of threat detection considering the quantity of data and variety of digital platforms. A risk engine powered by machine learning adapts to changing business needs, improves review efficacy, and minimizes false positives.

Taking Necessary Steps

Businesses may safely integrate contemporary platforms to increase the success of their promotional activities without putting all they have worked so hard to accomplish at risk by putting in place a uniform defense architecture from review to remedy. Since CMOs and their staff are now leading the charge in preserving the reputation of brands, they also must take steps to safeguard their digital content and so increase the value of their brands.

So, because the uncertainty has struck the planet once more, all businesses and government entities, including their social media, should strengthen their online security.

Check out some excellent practices for safeguarding your social networking assets.

Sharing login information for your social media accounts among team members poses the biggest security danger for businesses. Your chance of being severely compromised increases when access is distributed among several users, and this may also be a violation of your company’s information security policy. Additionally, you have lost control of your social media communications; how can you be certain of who has broken into your profiles and what has been posted?

Provide each user with a separate login to reduce hazards. You can easily identify who has logged in and what they have posted because it is more secure.

Don’t Write Down, Remember

Did you know that 1 in 5 individuals still write their passwords down? Even worse, a lot of those individuals tape their private login information right in front of everyone’s eyes to their seats or computers. You can never be certain who has control and access over your social media because of poor security practices. And being on such ‘terrain’ is hazardous. Your company will be better able to withstand cyberattacks if you promote safe, secure password usage.

By consolidating your social network accounts all into the secure platform, you may lower the number of usernames and passwords that employees need to remember. Both your reputation and cyber security will be tightened.

A ‘Belt and Braces’ Strategy

There is always space for improvement, even if you use passwords in accordance with best practices.

Using 2-Factor Authentication (2FA), retain your systems for social management far more safely. At that point, users must verify their identity by providing a password AND an extra code that is given to their email. That makes it considerably more difficult for wannabe intruders to acquire access.

Follow the Rules

To make sure you are constantly on brand, you should monitor all of your outbound social media posts. It is challenging to do that in a big organization. However, you may safeguard your reputation with better safeguards if the proper technology is in place.

Establish approvals based on responsibilities or rules. While they are still honing their talents, new employees might have supervisors approve all of their content. Additionally, communications will need permission if they violate the organization’s social media standards and guidelines.

Monitoring

Identifying who posted what and when also provides you with an incredibly clear audit trail if you are dealing with massive numbers of posts. To adhere to best practices, it is worthwhile to keep complete records.

Use a solution that will perform this task automatically for you instead. When you undertake internal reviews, you will advance. But if there is an outside investigation, you will also have the information at your fingertips.

Solid as a Rock

In keeping with keeping records, do you also securely store your social media data?

Maintaining your sensitive data in an ISO27001-compliant place is the best practice for cyber security. And run regular penetration testing to make sure it is secure. Systems and storing that are completely compliant with ISO27001 must be used to keep information secure for your clients. All of your workers must also undergo background checks.

Simply put: Is your company’s online security up to par?

Request a demo or a briefing with a tech platform that facilitates upgrading and safeguarding online presence for online businesses to learn how they can help you defend your social media channels as malware and hackers are on the rise.