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Social media is widely used by individuals and enterprises today and is often also unfortunately widely used by cyber-attackers. How can organizations protect their social media assets? That’s a challenge that multiple vendors are now tackling, including ZeroFox.
Back In 2013, Evan Blair helped to start social media security vendor ZeroFox and has seen continued demand for his company’s technologies over the years. In a video interview with eWEEK (above), Blair discusses the origins of ZeroFox and how both social media threats and the company have changed.
“ZeroFox started with a point-problem and we have since expanded to become a platform that really allows organizations to gain full control over all the risks that exist to their business, technology assets and people, through the use of social media,” Blair told eWEEK.
Twitter at 280 Characters
One of the biggest changes to hit the social media landscape in the last few years was the expansion of Twitter’s message size from 140 to 280 characters. Though Twitter messages can now be longer, that doesn’t mean that Twitter is less secure.
According to Blair, the longer Twitter messages actually can make it easier for ZeroFox to keep users safe. With longer messages, it’s more likely that ZeroFox will be able to identify patterns that can identify potential attacks.
“It’s actually harmful for an adversary to use more content,” Blair said.
Automated Attacks
Another change that has impacted the social media landscape in recent years has been the rise of automated bot and machine learning technologies. Blair said that ZeroFox has seen large scale attacks driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence, that makes use of individuals’ social media information.
Blair said that the automated attacks that use social media can be used in phishing campaigns that have a high success rate.
“Almost three quarters of attacks are successful on social media and that’s because they are highly personalized,” Blair said. “Everybody is at risk, because everyone has something of value to the attackers.”
Watch the full video interview with Evan Blair above.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.