Social, savvy and secure SMB

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Anand Naik | 16 Jun, 2012
The advent of social media today has been a boon for Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) who are acknowledging its increasing value as a business tool. As more users sign up each day on social networking platforms the potential customer reach is phenomenal and thus today social networks are irresistible to marketers. Social media campaigns today, find appeal across many verticals.

FICCI's (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) recent tie-up with a leading social network showed the increasing acceptance of the medium. The purpose of the tie - up is to share educational resources and provide free advertising to help SMEs in India grow their businesses online.

Social media brings in benefits for both customers and businesses alike. Businesses have the advantage of receiving customer feedback or ratings instantly. Collective customer conversations on these platforms provide better online visibility for brands and also ensure greater brand awareness amongst the media and key industry analysts. It also plays a major role in new customer acquisition and sales development. Some of the strategies adopted include, active blogging and maintaining dedicated fan pages aimed at product promotion and customer endearment. Daily updates and comments on a company's home page on these platforms ensure that the interaction with the target customers is regular and continuous.

However, along with highly visible benefits, social media usage by SMBs also brings in newer challenges in information security. The popularity of the platforms has resulted in them serving as hunting grounds for cybercriminals who lurk on the internet prowling for sensitive information. According to the Symantec 2011 Social Media Protection Flash Poll, the top three social media incidents the typical enterprise experienced over a period of one year were: employees sharing too much information in public forums (46 percent), the loss or exposure of confidential information (41 percent), embarrassment and damage to brand reputation (40 percent).

Social networks with their easy user interface give the end-users an implied sense of security, making them more inclined to click on links without suspicion. Sometimes, employees may fall for a cleverly orchestrated scam that seeks to deceptively obtain confidential business information. If they thus succeed, cybercriminals can easily access online accounts to steal personal information and content, including personal communication, documents, login credentials and even bank login credentials.

However this doesn't mean that these threats cannot be tackled. SMBs can define policies for the safe usage of social media among employees and educate them to conduct social networking with care and caution. Social media can be used securely if employees take some basic precautions in their usage.

The following tips can be shared with employees to help them safely exploit, the huge business potential of social media.

Employees must check the social networking site's address and scrutinize a suspicious site's security certificate to ensure they are logging into legitimate websites and also look for "https" in the address
Be cautious while sharing personal information like birth date, street number of your home or other sensitive information on social networking sites
Check your privacy setting periodically
Don't be prompted to answer 'yes' when asked to save your password to a computer. Instead, rely on a strong password committed to memory or stored in a dependable password management program
Don't accept "friend" or "follower" requests from individual's you don't know
Don't click on links in messages, even if from a known "friend", that seems strange or out of character
Report any suspicious or potentially malicious activity to the social networking site's administrators

SMBs have found social media as a convenient, effective and virtually cost free platform to reach their customers. However it is important to be aware of the security challenges this brings into their IT networks. By following the basic tips as mentioned above, an SMB user can be savvy while also being secure while going onto any social network.

* The author is the Managing Director- Sales, India and SAARC, Symantec.
* The views expressed by the author in this article are his/ her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.