Cybersecurity

Understanding Social Media Demographics

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As of 2021, the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Facebook is a website which allows free profile users to connect with others in an online space. It allows users to share pictures, music, videos, and articles, as well as their own thoughts and opinions with whomever they wish. Acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing app and social network platform. It allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. Users can add post captions, use hashtags, and location-based geotags to index these posts then make the posts searchable by other users within the app. Each user post  appears on their followers’ Instagram feeds and can also be viewed by the public when tagged using hashtags or geotags. Users also have the option of making their profile private so that only their followers can view their posts. Lastly there is Twitter, a microblogging site where people communicate in tweets. Tweeting is posting short 258 character messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience.

When you join a social media platform such as Facebook, you become a part of their social media demographics, which is in short, is a particular sector of a population that you are a part of that regularly utilize specific social media platforms. These are used by digital marketers to cultivate social media strategies that align with the needs and habits of different demographic groups on each social media network. In the next three paragraphs, I will walk through the social demographics available on Social Media Demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2021 as to what the break down of users and the user device types.

First up is Facebook, which has about 2.7 billion active monthly users, with 25-34 (26.3%) year-olds being the largest group. Of all the users, 44% female, 56% male but they all tend to spend 38 minutes per day on Facebook. The large influx of boomers to Facebook in 2021 makes it an excellent place to advertise for older demographics. But they also are being joined by many teenagers although it’s definitely not their preferred social media platform. Next up is Instagram, which has about 1 billion active monthly users 33.1% are in the 25-34 age range and 57% female, 43% male compared to Facebook’s 26.3% 25-34 year-olds which are 44% female, 56% male and Twitter’s 30-49 (44%) year-olds which are 32% female, 68% male. Most Instagram users spend 29 minutes per day on Instagram, and it is the third U.S. teens’ preferred social platform and recent Instagram stats show that Instagram is a high motivator for shopping.

Twitter is the last of the top three social media platforms at 187 million daily active users in of which 44% are in the 30 to 49 age bracket with 32% being female and 68% male. They tend to spend about 3.53 minutes per session in a given day or week. 80% of tweets are produced by the 10% of the most active accounts, but interestingly, 42% of Twitter users have a college degree of some type. But across the board, there seems to be more men than women on social media.

As I mentioned in the earlier three paragraphs, on average, according to Social Media Demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2021, each person spends about 23.51 minutes per day on each of the social media platforms. But Facebook is the fastest growing social media network out of the three, with 69% of Americans using it and it is the second fastest growing network. It has not grown significantly in numbers, but many people say that they are using the platform from 2019 to 2020; but 81.8% of people use only a mobile phone to access Facebook, 16.7% use a mobile phone and computer, and 1.5% use only a computer to access Facebook. The reason that Facebook is becoming more popular is because it used by many as the only place of updates. Next, Instagram is the third fastest growing social media platform is which has grown 3% since 2019 and 40% of Americans use the platform. They break down into four categories of user accesses: 47% smartphone users, 31% Tablet users, 20% computer users, and the last 2% are other random devices. Lastly, Twitter is the seventh fastest growing social media platform, with only a 1% increase in usage since 2019 and only 23% of Americans actually use Twitter, and less than 50% of those using it daily. In 2015 (that was the newest statistics I could find) 61 million monthly Twitter users were on desktop and 241 were mobile.

So to sum this up, Facebook is the largest social media platform, especially when you add Instagram in and the largest group of users are the 25 to 35 age range the male population. This means that the adult male population has a high interaction rate with social media and ads aimed at this age group are more likely to have an impact. So, that is what a demographic is and this is all for DMD 113 week 9 understanding social media demographics.

Cybersecurity and bad habits

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As I mentioned before on my cybersecurity post, cybersecurity is the biggest growing business in the world. A prime example of this is a website maleware attack that cause a educational website to become the launching pad pornographic photos and video.

The employees that run the site had an email that came from what they thought was their book supplier, but it had a slightly different form when it came into their email box. When one employee opened it, it started a chain reaction that sent emails to everyone on the email contact list, and it continued to populate until it hits 100 devices. After it reacted its limit, it froze the devices it was opened on an took a copy of all the data on the device, after which it deleted itself from the device and left no trace of its presence on the device. After getting access to all the sensitive company data, it used it to take control of the company’s social media and websites and changed them to pornographic launch pads that take control of devices. The devices used on the site, become spying tools for the hacker to use to gain money and data. This caused millions of dollars in damages to people around the world, and people’s lives were ruined for eternity. The only way to stop the male/ransomware attacks was to create a counter attack that caused the attack software to malfunction and collapse in on itself, but the repercussions of such an attack are felt for years, and some people never truly recover from such an attack.

The lesson is that even though you get an email, does not mean it is the true thing, things that seem as innocent as a text or email can cause you to lose sensitive data and  years of work. So, do your research on an unknown email or text; if you can talk to the person offline, do so to make sure that they actually sent you that email or link. If you realize that it is not the person you think it is, block and delete the conversation from your devices. Also, if you are new to a server or website, be careful about what you do, as you are a more vulnerable target for hackers, as they may realize that you know very little about your area and it makes you easy to manipulate. Read 10 worst Cybersecurity Habits to Stop Immediately and CISA Names 3 ‘Exceptionally Dangerous’ Behaviors to Avoid.

 

 

Cybersecurity

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Cybersecurity is the biggest growing business in the world, as it is required to keep safe the online lives of thousands of people every day. Many of us do not think about our online security, cause well, there are many companies working to keep you safe every day; but there are also companies out there that are scheming to scam you out of money, information, or property.

The top five threats are phishing, cloud ware attacks, mobile malware, ransomware attacks, and insider threats. Phishing is where a hacker pretends to be someone like our company or our bank; but the email address is often slightly altered. In the email, they send a link that requires you to enter your personal information, and in 2019, phishing was responsible for 32% of confirmed data breaches and 78% of all cybercrimes. These  cybercriminals managed to create phishing schemes through companies’ cloud applications. This is a top priority security detail to watch for in 2021.

The second type of attack is cloud jacking, meaning there is infiltration by a third party in the company cloud computing. Upon the hacker infiltrating the company cloud, they attempt to reconfigure the cloud code, attempting to take control of the entire company cloud and gain access to sensitive company details. This creates the perfect opportunity for hackers to create a phishing attack from within the company.

Next up are the malware attacks, because many people are moving to remote work, those working with the company that are open to attacks by using unknown WIFI networks. Think that it is okay to just use that public network at that coffee shop just once? Think again, it is not just playing games on an unknown network, but also working on an unknown network that leaves you and your device vulnerable to malware attacks. This type of cyberattack is aimed specifically at mobile devices to gain sensitive company data are that is being accessed and stored on mobile devices.

Fourth on the list is ransomware is an increasing plague for business for several years now. The most successful attacks have caused the lose of millions of dollars in ransom payments, which encourages hackers to continue to use and refine these attacks. According to a McAfee prediction report, the process on the dark web to purchase ransomware kits is much easier; also the software for ransomware is becoming increasingly more sophisticated. Also, the ransomwares are beginning to consolidate to form powerhouse; meaning that one attack causes even greater costs from downtime.

Lastly, there are the insider threats, or threats posed by employees, this is affecting 34% of businesses around the world. This is caused by employees intentionally or accidentally hurting the company, out of ignorance or negligence. With the increase of employees going to remote work, creates additional risks, meaning extra precautions are to be taken curb insider threats. However, there are specialized tools that detect unauthorized logins, new apps installed on locked computers, newly granted authorization accesses, and restricted networks that have new devices on them. Also, routine cybersecurity training should be provided to employees to prevent mistakes before they happen.

In the restaurant business, there is cloud storage of employee data, a website, mobile ordering, as well as Instagram and Facebook pages. As mentioned in the five pervious paragraphs, unintentional leaks and hijacking are means of attacking the company, and Facebook hacking has become an even bigger thing. Why just within the last month, a friend of mine had their Facebook account hacked into by someone in an attempt to control the account.

As the Chief Tech Executive, I recommend giving employees routine cybersecurity training, using VPNs for sensitive data, and having a cloud storage that is only accessible by VPN, for sensitive data using one time passwords that are given based on employee privileges’, also using encrypted email and data for highly sensitive data. When employees are doing work, they have use known networks or data to work company projects. These are some of the ways to protect data and there are thousands of more ways to protect the company. See Computer Security Threats for more information.