Along with establishing an Internet security policy handbook or end-user policy there’s another important addition to that and then involves social media.
Really consider establishing a social media acceptable use policy. There’s some things that you need to keep in mind. If you’re marketing sales or corporate management folks use social media outlets, and today they most certainly do, you have to keep in mind that they may not know everything and take every precaution that you would.
So, the question is what are you doing to ensure that your proprietary information and your business image are protected at all times? Consider establishing a social media acceptable use policy.
Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others allow your staff to access the world through tweeting and posting and all other avenues. While they’re doing that, they are disseminating your company’s products and information. Now that’s great as long as your people follow specific guidelines.
Don’t assume people know and understand the potential online risks like you do. Your staff members are comprised of people of all ages capabilities and backgrounds, so they will need your guidance in terms of training and understanding of what’s acceptable and what is not acceptable when using social media. Let’s go through a few examples.
Proprietary Company information
First and foremost you need to ensure that nothing confidential like your financial data and your personnel records are communicated online at any time. In other words, don’t allow your staff to disseminate any information that management would never approve on paper. This rule not only applies to social media but it should apply to your e-mail communications well. If you need to provide your staff with specific examples in your policy document so they have a better idea of what items are acceptable and what items are not acceptable to distribute to the world at large
Social Media For Business vs. Social Media For Personal Use
Social media for business is different than social media for personal use. Your policy also needs to clearly define both personal and business examples. Personal information can be used by hackers. How?
Well if somebody decides that they want to distribute birthday information family names personal statistics via their business accounts, this is something that hackers can use against them. If your staffers are using any of that kind of information for their logins or for their credentials please make yourself aware of this potential risk.
Remember hackers are looking for the proverbial low hanging fruit. Hackers are not looking for devices and online locations that are properly secured. That’s work. They’re looking for the easy stuff. They’re looking for openings and those openings are usually provided by end-users. Those end-users don’t mean to do that but they do it inadvertently because they don’t know any better.
Teach your staff how to close off these potential openings and you will go a long way in shoring up your cyber security for your organization. If you have any questions about any of our information or if you would like more information please feel free to contact us anytime. We have a number of security professionals partners that are here to help.
Related Content: Cyber Security- End User Do’s and Dont’s