by Di Turner
With the increase in hacking and security threats, many have increased their online security using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). But have you forgotten about your social media accounts? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn?
If you have business social media pages and feeds, then these may have linkages to your own personal accounts as well. If these accounts were to be compromised, this could cause damage to your business, brand, and the business’s reputation.
There are several ways you can secure your social media accounts, including:
Using a complex password for each social media site,
Changing your passwords regularly,
Enabling two factor authentication,
Ensuring that past staff don’t have access to your Social Media business pages and accounts.
1 Use a complex password
This means choosing a password which is at least 7 characters in length, uses a combination of letters (both upper and lower case), numbers and symbols. Ensure you only use this password once and don’t reuse it on multiple sites! Don’t worry too much about forgetting your password – the most important one to remember is your email, as you can always reset any other passwords if you have forgotten them. Alternatively use a password manager such as 1Password.
Although it might be tempting to use your Facebook account to log into other applications, I would avoid doing this. Once a hacker has infiltrated your Facebook account, they may try to systematically access these other accounts.
2 Change your passwords regularly
Quite often we don’t hear of data breaches until many months or even a year after the event, so make it a habit to change your account passwords on a regular basis. At least quarterly, if not monthly.
If you have shared social media business account logins, ensure you do not share the passwords via email. If your email is comprised, so could any details that have been shared via email.
3 Enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two factor authentication requires you to authenticate in two ways, the first normally being your password. The second method could be via a code sent to your email address, SMS to your smart phone, or code in an authentication application.
Here are some links to webpages which instruct you on how to set up 2FA for your social media accounts:
Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/566810106808145
Google (used for YouTube): https://www.google.com.au/landing/2step/
4 Staff Access
Finally, although we don’t expect staff to perform malicious activities when they leave an organisation, it does happen. Ensure that you remove any access to business accounts, or if it is a shared account, change the passwords immediately.
As you can see, there are many ways in which you can protect your social media accounts and if you haven’t done so already, setup MFA immediately as your first precaution.
I would also recommend that businesses include a policy regarding social media within the organisation. Include in this policy information rules about securing accounts, and use of business social media accounts (the types of information you can and cannot post), who should have access to business social media accounts, and the notification process for compromised social media accounts that have access to business accounts and pages.
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