A framework to mitigate social engineering through social media within the enterprise

Abstract

The influx of employees using social media throughout the working environment has presented information security professionals with an extensive array of challenges facing people, process and technology. Social engineering through social media is a formidable enterprise concern due to the proclivity of social engineers targeting employees through these mediums to attack information assets residing within the organization. This research was motivated by a perceived gap in academic literature of organizational controls and guidance for employees concerning social engineering threats through social media adoption. The purpose of this paper is to propose a social media policy framework focusing on the practical reduction of social engineering risk through ICT security policy control. The framework's development involved an analysis of the primary social engineering through social media challenges alongside current information security standard recommendations. The resulting proposal for the SESM (Social Engineering through Social Media) framework addresses these challenges by conceptualizing enterprise implementation through the interconnection of relevant existing IT security standards in juxtaposition with our own social media policy development framework.