Protect your Organization's Online Presence - WST

Nearly all organizations maintain more than just a website when it comes to their online presence. Social media is a convenient, ubiquitous way for businesses to maintain and build a community with their customers.

Remember though: social media platforms are OUTSIDE many of your organization's normal security layers. Your firewalls, antivirus, web content filtering, and all the rest do not apply to social media platforms hosted on the Internet. You are counting on each platform's security alone. Still, there are a few things you can do manage the risks when maintaining a positive social media presence:

• Think about using strong passwords AND multi-factor authentication on any accounts that can update social media content. Consider the risks: if a threat actor gets hold of such an account, they could do more than just post inappropriate content. It's feasible that a threat actor could post "as you," providing malicious links or instructions to your social media followers. "Click this (phishing) link for your free gift!" Or, worse: "We are experiencing a problem with our main website. Feel free to use this (malicious) link to access your account while we correct the issue."
• Check your social media platform to see if they offer any alerting based on content change. It's better to know what is being said in your organization's name than be surprised by a post.
• Consider a strong social media policy and plan for your organization. Knowing who in your organization is authorized to post and manage content is important. Think about putting standards and guidelines around what type of content is appropriate.

The concepts above also apply to managing your organization's website and domain names. Those aspects of your online presence are also important to your organization, so take some time to look into strong protection for those components, too.

Authored by: David Bentley, CBISO, CISSP