Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

1.4.2
 
Research hypothesis 
The study will be focused on the following hypothesis question: 
H1: Are social media platforms putting users at more privacy and security risks? 
H0: Social media platforms are not putting users at any privacy and security risks. 
1.4.3
 
Current mitigating techniques 
There have been a number of mitigating techniques put forward by social media 
companies to help users deal with all the privacy and security issues that they are facing on 

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social media. These have come from social media companies and some concerned 
organizations, as detailed below: 
a.
Social media platforms are trying to give users some level of control over their 
privacy via security settings. Although this control is very limited, it can help 
defeat the petty burglars and other profile-ogling attackers. Social media platforms 
have continued to provide more privacy controls that users can implement to limit 
the people that can view their profiles and posts. The same controls can also be 
used to limit people who can contact them or tag them in pictures. These controls 
are quite helpful but not an assurance that one’s information will remain private. 
Social media companies, such as Facebook, are continually updating their users’ 
security settings to make them more understandable to novice users (Larson, 
2018). Facebook has also tried to simplify the presentation of the security options 
that a user has (Locklear, 2018). 
b.
Organizations have taken up the responsibility of keeping their employees safe on 
social media ("Employee Training is the Only Way to Prevent Social 
Engineering", 2018). They are scared of attacks such as social engineering that 
may come back to haunt the organization itself. They are, therefore, spreading 
awareness on the risks and threats lurking on social media. They are also teaching 
their users on how to secure their profiles from these attackers ("Employee 
Training is the Only Way to Prevent Social Engineering", 2018). A bigger part of 
users is not aware of some of these threats, and attackers are capitalizing on this. 
The efforts to spread awareness are also not so motivated. The laxity of users in 
implementing what has been taught is also a big challenge. 

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