Social media accounts help shape a brand’s identity and reputation. These public forums engage directly with customers as they are a hub to connect, share content and answer questions. However, despite the high profile role these accounts have, many organizations overlook social media account security. Many lack the safeguards to prevent unauthorized access — a situation no organization wants as it can quickly spiral to include reputational damage and financial losses.
With the impact this high, the need for deep understanding of social media risks as well as how to protect an organization’s social media account are more crucial than ever. This article dives into the details of social media accounts, how social media can be misused and how to protect oneself.
Understanding the Layers of Social Media Access
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn typically have two layers of access.
- The Public Facing Page: where brands post content and engage with users.
- The Advertising Account: Used to run targeted ad campaigns, and generate leads, often linked to payment methods.
These two layers are interconnected but operate independently. Each page has its own access roles, permissions, and configuration settings. Permissions are often granted to external agencies, who handle different aspects of social media. Non-human identities, such as social media management platforms, can be posted on behalf of companies, executives, and high-profile employees. Monitoring both these layers is essential, as each layer allows users to post on the brand’s behalf.
Three Risks for Social Media Breaches
Social media platforms are typically managed by multiple internal and external stakeholders. This type of dispersed access allows, if not properly managed, the ‘keys’ to potentially fall into the wrong hands. Unauthorized users can then make changes, post, or comment on behalf of the brand without approval — which of course has the potential for reputational harm and other kinds of damage.
Furthermore, poor governance of social media accounts can lead to finger-pointing when something goes wrong. A lack of visibility into who is doing what exposes organizations to operational inefficiencies and security threats.
Thirdly, those who gain access to the ad accounts can mismanage or misappropriate resources. With ad accounts connected to an approved payment mechanism, a threat actor could launch expensive ad campaigns promoting a different agenda. There needs to be properly configured ad account users and permissions — or else this could spend an entire marketing budget and cause reputational damage.
Mitigating Social Media Risks with SSPM
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) tools aren’t traditionally used to secure social media accounts, however, leading SSPM platforms have the capability — and should be utilized to do just that. These integrations provide centralized visibility so that social media managers and security teams will have visibility into users, their levels of access, and their permissions. This will make for a much stronger governance model to better protect that social ecosystem.
An SSPM can also run security checks to identify high-risk configurations. This ensures that accounts have spending limits in place, and provides visibility into which internal and external users can access payment mechanisms within the platform.
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) capabilities can also detect unusual activity within such accounts, enabling real-time response to imminent threats.
Gain Social Media Security: Use Cases
Monitoring social media accounts enables companies to protect themselves in the following use cases.
- Control over posting and engagement: Ensure that only authorized users can post, comment, and engage on the brand’s behalf
- Monitor agencies and external collaborators: Set boundaries and gain transparency into external user behavior
- Marketing resource management: Verify spend caps and control user access to mitigate the risk of unauthorized spending
- Account activity audits: Detect and stop unusual or high-risk behavior
Secure Your Social Presence with SSPM
The digital landscape is constantly changing, and with it, the nature of threats. Social media now plays a crucial role in an organization’s brand and reputation, making it imperative to secure these accounts as part of a comprehensive SaaS security strategy. SSPM social media integrations offer the visibility, control, and protection required to safeguard these essential assets.
Learn how to secure your social accounts now
