Not everyone is having their way after the recent Twitter
\naccount hacking<\/a> of fast food giant, Burger King. On Monday, Burger Kings
\naccount was clearly hacked after making a false announcement about being bought
\nby competitor McDonalds Corp. The profile picture and header photo were swapped
\nout for McDonalds branded images and more than 55 tweets and retweets were sent
\nout during the hour that the happy hacker had with the account. After a Twitter
\nrepresentative finally responded to the message left by Burger King staff, the
\naccount was suspended and the company later issued a statement apologizing for
\nthe ill-humored tweets. Fox
\nNews<\/a> reported that both internal staff and their outside agency had access
\nto the accounts password but do not have any idea who hacked the account. McDonalds
\nalso issued a statement confirming they had nothing to do with the hacking.
\nSocial media, and Twitter specifically, have been dealing with cyber security
\nissues at an increasing rate. Twitter openly admitted that on February first of
\nthis year, cyber
\nattackers<\/a> may have gotten ahold of over 250,000 usernames and passwords.
\nWhile this may seem a like fairly innocent prank, brands need to be weary of
\ntheir identity through their social properties.<\/p>\n
Companies live and breathe online. Even companies that have
\nbrick and mortar stores and conduct the majority of their business
\nface-to-face, have an online presence in this day of age. Losing an identity
\nonline is more than having personal information taken from an individual; its
\nany loss of control over content, properties, or information. Social media
\nallows businesses and consumers to create and maintain their identity online
\nand if login information is compromised so is their identity. Even with the
\nlatest efforts from the federal government, cyber
\nsecurity<\/a> is still an issue. Twitter has considered implementing two-factor
\nauthentication for login that would require a second form of confirmation in
\naddition to standard login criteria. Many two-factor authentication models send
\na code to the users mobile phone to help prove their identity. While this may
\nhelp in the short term, fraud prevention models like this are flawed due to
\nphysical theft of devices. As companies begin to take fraud prevention<\/a>
\nmore seriously, data breaches and hackings will slowly start to decrease. The
\nfirst steps to preventing fraud online is understanding the risks and having
\nthe initiative to be one step ahead of cyber attackers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
[Contributed by EVS Marketing]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n