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BBC Investigates Facebook Ads

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For many companies, Facebook fans are a much sought-after commodity. After all, plenty of people spend hours glued to the social media site, and having your business’s messages show up there makes you a part of their virtual community.

But an investigation by the BBC may make marketers think twice before buying Facebook ads asking people to “like” their pages. Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos told the BBC that spammers and malware distributors create fake Facebook profiles capable of automatically hitting the little thumbs-up button on thousands of pages. By making all those connections, they build bigger communities of people to reach out to with their spam and scams, but they may also give businesses a false impression of how well their Facebook ads are working.

Facebook has revealed that 5 to 6 percent of its users, may be fake. That’s not a huge percentage, but it adds up to about 54 million profiles, and they may be disproportionately the ones that end up “liking” business pages.

To test how big the problem is, the BBC created a page for a fake business called VirtualBagel and bought ads designed to attract fans. In just a day, the investigation found VirtualBagel got 1,600 likes, “despite the fact that the page offered no products and no interesting content.” And, although the ads were aimed at the U.S., the U.K. and parts of the Middle East and Asia, almost all the likes came from profiles in India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines, and many of them appeared to be fake.

Facebook told the BBC that it doesn’t see a “wave of likes” coming from false users, but Cluley suggested the social media giant has reason to downplay the problem. After all, its biggest revenue source is ads.

So, what can you do to make sure your business page is getting real Facebook friends? Of course, posting interesting, useful content is a major part of any good social media strategy. It’s also a good idea to keep track of the statistics that Facebook provides, and to use other tools like Google Analytics to see if Facebook fans are becoming customers.

Beyond that, different kinds of companies will have different strategies that fit them best, so an IT consulting firm can help you figure out your own best practices.

IT Security and Training reduce Cyber Attacks

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Increase in cyber attacks cost firms nearly $50K per year 

Cyber attacks for reasons political, financial or fun have spread exponentially over the last year. Increased spending on security and training is doing much to stem the flow of information into the wrong hands. A Symantec survey of 1, 425 IT managers across 32 countries revealed that the $35 billion currently spent on it support services and security support is expected to rise to over $49 billion in the next three years, with many companies opting for security through cloud computing packages. With data breaches effecting even the biggest corporations (the recent hacking of Zappo comes to mind), everyone is taking security more seriously. The survey found that cyber attacks in 2011 cost companies an average of $470,000 in lost revenue, downtime and loss of brand confidence.

Cyber attacks include spam, viruses, fraud, data theft, vandalism and denial of service. A poll by Juniper Network had 77% of respondents saying cyber attacks are more frequent and severe than they have been in the past, while 90% of respondents claimed to have suffered a data breach in the last year.

The rapid increase of attacks comes as employees bring their own devices into the workplace. 29% of breaches in security occurred on tablets and Smartphones and 34% on employee laptop computers. As employees increasingly introduce personal devices into the workplace, security has to be installed and protocols established to secure sensitive data.

Companies who turn to IT consulting specialists and invest in security and training for employees suffer a far lower rate of security breaches. The survey revealed that top-tier companies who used IT consulting firms to bolster security and staff training benefitted from two and half times fewer attacks than companies who did not invest in security.

Downtime is by far the most frustrating consequence of compromised security. Here the advantage of investing in an IT consulting firm to provide security is self-evident. The companies which had not made adequate investments in security suffered 2 765 hours of downtime a year in comparison to the relatively few 588 hours that secure companies endured.

Not utilizing IT consulting specialists or investing in security and training means damage and downtime that is sure to cost more than the initial security investment would have. It makes financial sense to invest in protecting customers and data from cyber attacks. As more employees bring their own devices to the workplace, it is imperative to establish security across the board and protocols aimed at securing data on all devices.