A universe of applications, many hidden from view, are connected to your corporate social media properties.Uncounted, unmonitored, and ungoverned, each is a potential social media security risk, as well as a real security risk to your enterprise.

Think about the many social media properties, which represent your enterprise, and ask yourself:

• Over time, how many people have had the ability to connect applications?
• How many people still have the credentials or permission to connect applications?
• How many applications now have access to these properties?
• Have any of those applications been compromised?
• Have any of the credentials used to log into those third-party applications been compromised?

These are the questions that every corporate Security and Social Media Governance professional should be asking. Because there is a prevalence of hidden security risks from the corporate social media footprint.

At Brandle, we're all about helping customers govern their corporate digital footprint and mitigate social media security risks. Monitoring compliance in social media profiles has been at the forefront of the Brandle Presence Manager, and now, Brandle is pleased to announce POP Post Governance to help govern social media compliance for posts.  

Why did Brandle venture into social media posts when there are so many other tools that publish and monitor post content? Because the governance and risk perspective is different than the marketing perspective of social media. 

Let's look at POP Post Governance and how it can mitigate compliance and security risks that arise from a corporate social media footprint.

There is nothing like a social network hack to remind us all that the social media security concerns touted by IT and Risk departments are not only valid but critical. While this recent Twitter hack attacked mainly high-profile verified personal accounts, it is certainly a reminder that security threats exist for corporations. In fact, the larger the digital footprint is for a company, the greater the social media security concern. For marketers and digital governance professionals, these risks are known and we do our best to manage them. Managing governance for a large digital footprint has always had its challenges; and managing social media governance from home adds even more security risks!

During this challenging time of working-from-home, we are all trying to stay motivated and focused to produce the work that can make a difference in the world. Eventually, we and our co-workers will return to the office and the work we do now will help us transition into the business that will be required of us later. At this time, the visibility of what may be "required" is foggy at best, but for those of us in the social media governance space, we do know that the digital world is not slowing down. In fact, social media security is more critical than ever with bad actors taking advantage of consumer fears and political campaigns lying in wait.

We are fortunate that much of the Tech industry is able to work from home during our current Covid-19 pandemic. Brandle fully supports our employees to be remote workers during this time, and we are ready to help our customers in anyway we can. This is why we turned our attention to release a new feature set called Tasks. 

We know that teams get into their own work rhythm inside a company. Managing team duties and tasks around social media and digital governance can be more complicated when everyone is working from home. So we decided to create some features to make it easier for remote workers. Brandle Tasks has been on the development roadmap, but we expedited the code and testing this past week to help our customers who are newly working from home. This feature is offered to all of our customers at no additional fee.

Brandle Tasks can now help you manage team responsibilities, track specific tasks, and mark them as complete from within the Brandle System.

Serious social media governance leaders know that a crisis event is in their future.  A social media crisis is not an "if" but a "when" situation. So the real question is: are you and your corporation ready to take charge and mitigate the risks when it happens? Recently, the NFL was put to the test when the hacker group OurMine decided to wreak havoc with team and player social media accounts. It's a good time to think about that event and ask yourself if you and your corporation are prepared to manage a social media crisis event like the NFL accounts being hijacked by hackers?

There are many digital threat avenues for bad-actors to infiltrate a corporation and social media has become a favorite. Even though there are technology solutions (such as Brandle) that help corporations with these risks, it still takes constant oversight, monitoring, and forward thinking. One area that is often overlooked is employee social media training specifically around the topic of risk to the corporation. This falls into the category of corporate social media security and risk management.

Creating a strong training program to educate employees on the risks and pathways that hackers and phishers use is critical. Delivering the requirements employees must follow to assist with corporate social media security should be mandatory. There are six key requirements that should be part of your social media security training program.

It's no secret that social media has become a major risk concern for corporations. According to a report by SentinelOne, over 80% of hacked companies reported that the attack entry points were from phishing emails and social media. Creating strong governance practices is essential to managing these social media security risks. Your brand reputation, data protection, and sales demand it!

As in any governance practice, it is helpful to gain an understanding of the potential threats. This is the only way that you can prevent, or at least, mitigate the attacks.

In this post, we highlight seven of the most common social media security issues.

Corporate social media concerns have progressed past the question of ROI as a marketing discipline and have landed squarely in the Risk Officers lap as a security concern. In fact, social media security is a serious risk for every corporation. Since 2011, cyber criminals have found a home on social media where they perpetuate fraud. During the past  six months, CIO Insight states that cyber criminals have increased 70% (and it does not appear to be slowing down). CIO Insights also states that worldwide security breach costs will grow from $3 Billion in 2015 to $6 Trillion in 2021. That's a lot of crime, and a lot of damage to your company!

To protect brands and reputation, companies must now ensure that their social media accounts are not gateways that expose them to costly threats. this means that you need to keep vigilant watch for cyber risks, including:

This post is the fourth and final entry of our series on how to create and manage a successful Social Media Governance Plan. At this point, you know that your key focus is to mitigate risks for your company that may arise from social media. The main risks that C-suite executives are concerned with are brand reputation damage and technology threats. (See our post on Understanding Key Corporate Risks for more details on C-Suite risk concerns.)

Controlling social media risks is all about creating a solid Social Media Governance Plan and maintaining an ongoing governance process. This series lays out a "best practice" outline that you can use for your company — just customize it to address specific concerns of your company and your industry. 

In Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and  of this blog series, we focused on the first eight steps of your plan:

1. Gather the Corporate Stakeholders of Social Media Governance, and
2. Review Corporate Risk Management Priorities
3. Review the Corporate Goals for Social Media Governance
4. Analyze Previous Successes, Failures, and Changes
5. Social Media, Employment, and Industry Law and Regulation Review
6. Review Corporate Social Media Policy
7. Social Network Participation and Risk Review
8. Discovery — Social Media Audit Process 

This is the final post in the series and we will highlight the five steps for processes and procedures of Social Media Governance.