Recently, hacks of major corporations and publications have been on the rise. As reported by Business Insider, even Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account was targeted last month in an effort to reveal a bug in their security. Although this was not an act of malicious nature, control was momentarily gained over Facebook’s brand identity. All of our reputations are vulnerable in this way and, by nature of social media, a moment is all that is needed. With followers upon followers, “news” spreads like wildfire across the internet.
This is not just an issue for personal or corporate accounts, though. It became apparent on April 23rd of this year, that a lack of social network security can turn into a national financial panic in an instant. That afternoon, at 1:07 p.m. ET, the Twitter account for the Associated Press was hacked by the syrian electronic army. A bogus tweet read:
“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
Immediately, the false claim was being re-tweeted by the thousands. Panic set in and the Dow, at 134 points, plummeted a staggering 145 points in the 3 short minutes. Pacifying the situation, the American Press announced the information as false, bringing the markets back up in almost the same amount of time.
Since this security breach, many other accounts have been also attacked by the syrian electronic army. The Gaurdian, The Onion, and even more well known news sources were targeted, such as The Washington Post, CNN, and most recently The New York Times. Luckily for them, big business can survive a security breach like this, but what about the small businesses that are being targeted? Phishing scams are the main culprits of successful small business account hacking. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, 36% of small business are attacked each year and of those, 60% go out of business.
Many small business owners are not aware that they are vulnerable to such attacks. Awareness, then is the fundamental aspect to their protection. I found some good tips from Cisco that can put the power back into the hands of small business owners. You can check them out here: http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/smb/need_to/secure_my_business_primer.html
Here is a clip from the Rachel Maddow show discussing the security breach of the AP's Twitter account:
Great post! Fascinating story, didn't know false rumors like that spread so fast. The graph showing the sell off is just crazy.
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