Security threats we face while using social media

Social networking sites are not the same way we were practicing a decade ago. It’s no secret that they have become a major risk matter for businesses. Research has declared that security throughout the world costs will grow from $3 Billion in 2015 to $6 Trillion in 2021, with social media being an important topic for cybercriminals.

Generating strong governance practices is crucial in order to manage these social media security risks. Your brand character and data security demand for it.

Here we are going to discuss some of the most important social media threats and methods of attacks. You are required to go through the all of the below threats in order to keep your business in the safe hands.

• Social engineering
  Social engineering is considered to be the most widespread social media threats and also the most popular tactics for cybercriminals in order to get confidential information about a business. Social media platform allow attackers to find confidential information that would be used to target specific individuals. Making use of information from employee profiles, a believable account can be created by hackers to build trust over time.
• Targeted phishing attacks
  This kind of attacks has been done in order to steal money or personal information. The social media threats are so specific and targeted where the chances are higher.
• Fake accounts
  In the month of July in 2010, a fake profile named Robin Sage was actively forced to request random people to get connected, and the people accepted without knowing who the person is.
• Celebrity name misuse
  Celebrity name misuse is one of the most common social media threats these days. There are a number of incidents of hackers registering a new account under the name of a celebrity. This kind of fake accounts is used in spreading misinformation and rumors or to be a magnet for new followers that are going to be spammed in the future.
• Site compromise
  In case if an attacker compromises a social networking site using a harmful code, any visitor to the site is prone to be attacked. Hackers have found a number of ways to insert a harmful code into advertisements and create rogue third-party applications that attract users.
• Social media use to spread spam and malware
  Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are specially targeted in order to spread malware. The growing popularity of the shortened URL is increasing the risk of threats to social media. Cybercriminals often cover their links using a short URL that makes it difficult for the user to recognize whether it is pointing to a legitimate or malicious site.

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