Today we’re announcing the release of SocialMonitor, an industry-leading capability to better protect executives from social media impersonation. Read on to find out more!

Executives Under Fire

In our recently-published Social Media Monitoring Solutions Guide, we outlined some of the most common use cases for social media monitoring. You won’t be surprised to learn that the most popular use case is the detection of fake VIP accounts.  

Top Four Social Media Monitoring Use Cases

There are many reasons why this is so common. Cybercriminals routinely create these fake accounts for social engineering attacks (such as business email compromise) or redirect users to malicious sites carrying malware. However, there can also be malicious attempts to spread disinformation about a company or its brands.

This is a concerningly common tactic, and you can read more about real-world examples in the cases of Kraken and the activities of the Lazarus Group. Such is the prevalence of the issue in the UK that the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI_ created the “Think Before You Link” campaign, encouraging users to “recognise, release, report and remove” fake profiles.

Limitation of Current Solutions

This is a known issue for businesses, and many social media platforms limit and remove these fake profiles. LinkedIn, for example, publishes the numbers of fake accounts they detect and remove in their Transparency Report. 

Fake Accounts Detected by LinkedIn

Despite these measures, there are many fake accounts that slip through the cracks. Security teams need to find a way to detect these accounts when they do slip through, ensuring they are taken down before they can be used as part of a campaign.

Keeping on top of the constant creation of fake profiles is a challenge, and existing solutions struggle to automate the detection due to a myriad of API restrictions introduced over the past several years. Automated collection is not always enough.

Taking a Dual Approach: Automated and Manual Collection 

Search Light (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) already automates the collection of social media, but SocialMonitor is a new add-on to complement automated collection with dedicated, manual searches performed by our team of analysts. 

SocialMonitor gives security teams the confidence that your company and executives are protected from impersonation, no matter what social media site. Furthermore, because the Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) analyst team is involved, customers benefit from additional review–ensuring alerts are accurate and free of false positives. 

An example SocialMonitor alert

 

Learn more about SocialMonitor

You can learn more about how SocialMonitor works by downloading a copy of our datasheet.

If you would like a meeting to discuss this capability further, you can arrange a time to chat with one of our experts