Report on Protecting Social Media Account Sample

REPORT ON PROTECTING SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

Task:

Write a maximum of 2-page report (font size 12, portrait orientation, and narrow margins if you use Microsoft Word or similar software. In-text referencing and Bibliography are required. Bibliography not included in two-page limit.) on the outcomes from this week's tutorial discussion answering the three questions below. Penalties apply for failing to adhere to the instruction.

Do further research to discuss the topics in detail but write succinctly.

Questions

Over the past few weeks we have seen Facebook in the news mentioning data of around 533 million Facebook users was leaked online for free ». According to a new report by CyberNews, data of more than 500 million users on LinkedIn has leaked E, paving the way for hackers to sell it for a big price. As an individual we can act proactively to maintain our social media activities and protect our account information.

For this week's activity, you need to research and write a report about

1. the steps a person should follow to find out whether her/his account information have been breached after such incident. [4 marks]

2. the steps a person should take to protect the account in the future. [4 marks]

3. the similarities and differences of the two data breach incidents mentioned above (Facebook and Linkedln). Write a brief recommendation on what the platforms could have done to prevent the incidents and what precautionary measures people who create accounts on such platforms should take to protect themselves. [7 marks]

Solution

Introduction

The recent data breaches of Facebook and LinkedIn have raised concerns about online security and personal information protection. This report will demonstrate how to safeguard the account in the future. As MBA Assignment Expert shows how to protect the Social Media Accounts.

Steps to find out about breach of account information:

After the recent Facebook and LinkedIn data breaches, it is critical to take proactive steps to protect the online accounts, which are as follows:

Change the password: If it is suspected that the account has been hacked, the first thing that should be done is to change the password right away (Thomas et al., 2019).

Examine account activity: Examine account activity for any unexpected logins or activities.

Check credit reports: To ensure no personal information has been hacked, immediately check credit reports.

Activate two-factor authentication: To add an extra degree of security to the accounts, enable two-factor authentication.

Steps to protect the account in the future:

Upon the discovery of a breach, it is critical to take steps to avoid future intrusions. Here are some precautions to safeguard the account:

Maintain software updates: Update the operating system, web browser, and other software on a regular basis to the most recent version (Keskin et al., 2021).

Employ strong, unique passwords: For each of the accounts, use strong, unique passwords. If an individual is using the same password for many accounts, attackers will have an easier time accessing all of the accounts.

Be wary of dubious emails and links: Unsolicited emails or links from unknown sources should be avoided.

Utilize privacy settings: Check and update the social media privacy settings to restrict the amount of personal information that is publicly viewable.

Similarities and differences between Facebook and LinkedIn data breach:

Both the Facebook and LinkedIn data breach exposed millions of users' personal information.

Similarities:

• The breaches exposed personal information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive information (Albulayhi & El Khediri, 2022).

• In both incidents, hackers accessed the data by exploiting security flaws in the platforms.

Differences:

• Facebook breach reveals the personal information of an individual, which includes birthdays, locations, relationship statuses, and more. Whereas in the case of LinkedIn, the professional information of an individual is hacked.

• The Facebook breach was triggered by a flaw in a function that allowed users to search for people by phone number, but the LinkedIn breach was caused by a web scraping technique that allowed hackers to get data from public profiles.

Recommendation:

Both Facebook and LinkedIn should establish enhanced security measures, such as frequent security audits, penetration testing, and stronger encryption mechanisms, to avoid similar occurrences in future (Færøy et al., 2023). Furthermore, they can also improve user authentication procedures and give individuals more granular control over their personal information.

Precautionary measure:

To safeguard themselves, users can generate strong, one-of-a-kind passwords for each account and enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Besides, users should also exercise attention when sharing personal information online and restrict the quantity of data they publish on social media. They can also periodically monitor their accounts for suspicious activity and examine their privacy settings to ensure that their data is not made public.

Conclusion

In conclusion, data breaches pose a significant danger to online security and personal information protection. Both platforms and people can reduce the danger of such accidents and protect themselves from potential harm by adopting proactive precautions.

Bibliography

Albulayhi, M.S. and El Khediri, S., 2022. A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 16(1).

Færøy, F.L., Yamin, M.M., Shukla, A. and Katt, B., 2023. Automatic Verification and Execution of Cyber Attack on IoT Devices. Sensors, 23(2), p.733.

Keskin, O.F., Caramancion, K.M., Tatar, I., Raza, O. and Tatar, U., 2021. Cyber third-party risk management: A comparison of non-intrusive risk scoring reports. Electronics, 10(10), p.1168.

Thomas, K., Pullman, J., Yeo, K., Raghunathan, A., Kelley, P.G., Invernizzi, L., Benko, B., Pietraszek, T., Patel, S., Boneh, D. and Bursztein, E., 2019, August. Protecting accounts from credential stuffing with password breach alerting. In USENIX Security Symposium (pp. 1556-1571).