In recent years, the number of cyber attacks has increased substantially. Hackers Have become more sophisticated and anti-virus providers are struggling to keep up. And with your social profiles being as important as your credit card details, keeping track of your passwords is more important than ever.
If you lose your personal information, you might end up posting advertisements for sunglasses on all your friends’ walls. But if your company’s social media feeds get hacked, you could lose the trust of your customers and see your reputation destroyed overnight.
Follow these steps to make sure that your social profiles never get hacked.
Quality Passwords
Your password should be able to withstand even the heaviest of cyber attacks. Even a password described as ‘medium strength’ is vulnerable to experienced hackers. You need an extremely strong password if you are going to make sure that nobody can destroy all your hard work.
Your social media password should consist of more characters than the required minimum: capital and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and anything else you can come up with that will throw hackers off your scent.
Whatever you do, never use a password generator. If your password is a serial number, you won’t stand a chance when it comes to remembering it. The only way to keep your passwords close would be to write it down somewhere, and that defeats the point of having a strong password because you’ve just created an additional vulnerability.
Password Location
When forming a new startup, you will likely be organizing both the physical and administrative aspects of the company. One thing you should consider is where you are actually storing your passwords. You can have the strongest password in the world, but if it isn’t stored in a safe place you are weak.
Your social passwords should only be revealed to the people who actually need them. And these people should be limited. Try to share passwords with the smallest number of people possible.
A password management solution can help as well. Portadi is one way to store and distribute your passwords in a secure way. You can share passwords with your team without making them visible, unlike email, messengers and texts.
Single Sign-On Technology
Another great option is to use single sign-on technology. The premise of this technology is simple. It lets employees sign into a company’s social media accounts using their company email account. This allows you to keep all relevant information in the hands of a central person. While the burden of responsibility lands on that one person, you can ensure that a leak won’t happen.
Single sign-on technology is relatively easy and cost-effective to adopt. There are plenty of solutions you can install within a few minutes.
Clickers Beware
Refrain from clicking on links you receive in emails. If someone sends you a link, go to the website by yourself and then navigate to the page manually. This will make sure that you are only ever clicking on links you know are genuine.
And for everyone else accessing your social media accounts, you should use a third-party platform like HootSuite or Sprout Social. These platforms will act as a protective shield so your accounts will never get hacked.
Protect Your Computer
None of this matters if you already have spyware installed on your computer. Hackers have become so sophisticated that they can take control of your account remotely with ease. And the only defense against this is to make sure that you have the latest anti-virus and anti-spyware software installed.
Also, make sure that you are using paid software. Free software isn’t updated often enough and it doesn’t come with the protection necessary to defend your company against the latest threats. Review your provider regularly to ensure that you are going with the best possible option available. Don’t be afraid to switch if you can find better protection elsewhere. After all, your online reputation is riding on this decision.
