Being Business Safe Online

October is the month of Halloween, ghosts, ghouls and all things scary, but this doesn't have to be the same online.

Here at sm2communicate, we like to use this month to review our client's privacy settings to ensure they are starting their digital journey with security in mind.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you change passwords frequently or when a member of the team leaves do you remove their access?
• Do you use the same password for all your accounts? 
• Do you regularly check your social media accounts for spam or undesirable messages and comments?

Here’s our 10 top tips to keep your business safe on social media:

 1.    Create secure passwords

• Passwords should be a mixture of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
• Use different passwords for different accounts.
• Change passwords regularly
• Keep passwords in a secure place

 2.    Go through your privacy settings

• Make sure you spend time going through your privacy settings on each social media account to make sure they are as secure as possible.

 3.    Make note of who has access to your social media accounts

• If you do have other people helping to manage your social media accounts, make sure you have a list of who has access to each account.

 4.    Create a Social Media policy

• If you have more than one person managing your social media accounts, create a policy with clear guidelines on what is acceptable to post and how to handle negative or spam posts. We can help here!

 5.    Set up alerts for suspicious activity

• Most social media platforms now give you the option of setting up notification alerts for suspicious activity and new logins. This will help you to be able to respond quickly if your social media account is hacked.

 6.    Check what applications your social media accounts are connected to and remove any you’re not familiar with

• A lot of applications like to use social media platforms to connect with your accounts, we recommend you take the time to understand what you are connecting to and potentially opening up your personal data to...

 7.    Install anti-virus software

• Having good anti-virus software on your computer is vital to protect all the information on your computer and also your social media accounts. Many of us use automatic logins for social media, so it’s imperative that this is protected from malicious spyware.

 8.    Be extra alert for ‘phishing’ scam emails

• A popular scam is for emails to appear as though they have been sent from an official social media network, alerting you about suspicious activity. To avoid falling in the trap, make sure you know the official email addresses to expect notification alerts from and check the email addresses you receive from. Never click on any of the links in the email, as this could be all that’s needed to gain access to your personal information.

 9.    Make use of the restrictive options on social media

• You can restrict your social media pages from people living in certain countries, according to certain ages and you can also restrict profanity from your page. If you have no desire for certain people or countries to interact with your business – restrict their access.

10. Don’t be afraid to use the block list option

• Sometimes, it is necessary to block users from your social media accounts. If there are trolls on your page, you can block them from interacting with your business on social media.

If you need any help with any of these security measures, get in touch with us at hello@sm2communicate.co.uk

Photo credit: istockphoto.D-Keine