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7 Online Reputation Management Mistakes Businesses Need to Avoid

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For modern businesses, there are few marketing tools more essential than a strong online reputation management (ORM) strategy. In bygone eras, the average consumer was most likely to trust and engage with a company based exclusively on the recommendations of friends and family or a reputation established by word-of-mouth within the local community, but today that trust has been redistributed to the opinion they form of a company based on what can be learned about it via search engine. Today, having a  positive online reputation  plays a key role in a business’s success by allowing owners to control some of what potential customers see when they use a search engine to research the company, and statistics show that they will. Based on data gathered by the marketing firm Edelman, around 65 percent of people today trust online search as a tool for gathering information about a business more than any other online or offline source. Companies that choose to engage in ORM practice to be
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How social media can ruin your online reputation?

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Does the name Lindsey Stone ring a bell? It might because, in 2012, she was involved in a social media scandal that rocked the Internet and tarnished her  online reputation . Stone was visiting the Arlington National Cemetery with her work when a colleague snapped a photo of her raising her middle finger and miming that she was shouting in front of a sign that read “Silence and Respect.” Stone posted the image to Facebook because she thought it was funny, but she soon incurred a monumental Internet backlash for it. Online users commented on the original picture, calling her “evil” and sending death threats her way. But the fallout from the picture didn’t stop there. Not only did her employer dismiss her from her job, but her online reputation was also ruined. Stone found herself unable to leave her house for a year afterwards and struggled to find work. Unfortunately, situations like these are becoming increasingly more common in the age of social media. Sites like Twitter and Fac
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The missing link in corporate IT security

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Corporate IT security has never been more important, yet evens the most sophisticated software defences can’t protect against human error. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that attackers increasingly rely on spear-phishing and other  social engineering   approaches to break into corporate IT systems. In particular, when it comes to hacking executives and other high-value targets, it pays for cyber-criminals to mount sophisticated, highly personalized attacks against their marks. Security-focused user training has arisen as a partial solution to this problem, but it has its limitations: compliance is never perfect, and any good social engineer will always be a step ahead of the curve. This is why companies should also focus on making social engineering more difficult to pull off. How? By obscuring sources of personal information that can be used to customize attacks. This security-focused scrubbing process is key to our privacy solutions here at  SingaDBS . The rise
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How social engineers find your personal information

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Social engineering is one of the fastest growing types of cyber-crime, since it leverages human error to get past even the most robust security systems. It’s also highly adaptable:  from Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks to executive wire fraud, from corporate espionage to ransom are attacks; social engineering has been a part of many of the biggest data breaches in recent years. So what is the key ingredient to a successful social engineering attack? Personal information. In order for the ploy to be successful, the attacker needs to tell a plausible story that feels authentic and wins over your trust. To do that, the attacker collects personal information that validates his or her story. Below, we’ll go over some of primary ways that social engineers find the personal information used in their attacks, and then provide tips on how to protect yourself. Corporate websites and PR : Executives are among the most common targets of personalized social engineering attacks, be
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6 ways to executive social engineering

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Executives make for tantalizing hacking targets, since a successful infiltration of their accounts can lead to a huge payoff—whether financial, or in terms of information gathering, or both. Executives often have access to many data systems, and many demand exceptions to company security regulations from their IT departments when they perceive them as too burdensome. It is easy to see, therefore, why attackers are increasingly focusing on  social engineering techniques  that involve tricking a company executive into granting system access. Below, we’ll take a look at some of the most common social engineering ploys used to compromise executives, as well as what you can do to prevent them. Executive impersonation : Since executives often travel for work, knowledge of their travel plans makes it easy to impersonate them. No one, after all, would be suspicious of an email request from the CEO when everyone in the office knows that he or she is presenting at a conference. O
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