PA Consulting Group has released a new video highlighting the threat social media can present to companies’ bottom line.
The video shows how sceptical board members are losing trillions of pounds for their businesses by not understanding just how powerful social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are – and how much reputational damage they can cause.
As companies worldwide lose more than $1trillion of intellectual property as a result of corporate espionage committed in cyber space, PA Consulting Group highlights the threat social media can present to companies’ bottom line. The new video shows how sceptical board members need to understand how seemingly innocuous use of social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter can lead to major financial or reputational damage.
It is easy for employees to be manipulated into revealing confidential information online by people they think of as friends. Competitors can then use this to undermine reputation and shareholder confidence, with damaging results. This year, the official Twitter account of a global news agency was subjected to what is believed to have been a social engineering hack. Using the news agency’s account, hackers tweeted a false news story about a White House explosion. US markets were spooked by the tweet and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 150 points as the ‘news’ was retweeted.
The good news is that this activity leaves a trail and effective social intelligence can identify and protect against it. PA’s work has shown that by undertaking expert analysis of social conversations and online behaviour, companies can gain the intelligence to understand where damaging information is coming from, the motives behind it and how to counteract it. It can then help predict where the threats are and allow companies to deal with them before the damage is done.
Nathan Sage, social intelligence expert at PA Consulting Group, says: “Many board members are not taking the threat from social media seriously but the reality is that it can present very real risks to a company. However, by recognising the threats and using social intelligence effectively, businesses can manage these risks very successfully. Alerts associated with individual executives can be generated almost instantly in the case of suspicious patterns of activity and these can provide the insight businesses need to take rapid and defensive action.”
View the video here
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