Social Media Protection – a New Category

The social network cybersecurity landscape is unique. In fact, this category is not filled by any incumbents.

Only in recent years, the need to protect your social media account has gained momentum. As hackers find new way to solicit people to share their personal information, including password and other login information, the need to protect your social media account has attracted enough attention that startup founders became interested in the field.

Recently, we’ve reached an all-time-high in social media hacking, ranging from Instagram hacking, Facebook hacking, Tiktok hacking and more.

Attackers have infiltrated into the Ads Manager of innocent social media users, and published ads on their behalf.

This can cause great monetary loss for people, that may materialize and be realized to the users only when the bill is actually paid.

By hacking into influencer accounts, attackers are able to promote their own content on behalf of the influencer, leading to damaged reputation, lost audiences and monetary loss from sales linked to the social media account.

Other attack vectors include bot attacks: in these sophisticated attacks, competitors to the social media account run a bot that adds a great number of fake followers to the account. An Instagram account can grow from 5k followers to 60k followers within a few hours! This causes great damange to the brand and its exposure, because all these fake followers never reply or read the posts posted on the account. This reduces the account exposure tremendously, allowing competitors to gain market share and lower the brand exposure.

Newcomers in the Social Media Protection Category

Company	Link	Description
Cyrus	https://cyrus.app/	Cyrus is a personal cybersecurity app that offers various features to protect your online accounts, financial assets, and personal devices. It provides 24/7 account security, dark web scanning for leaked personal information, and immediate alerts for suspicious activity. The app also offers 3 bureau credit monitoring, real-time alerts for flagged transactions, and support for ID theft and financial fraud. Additionally, it includes a VPN for online privacy, ad blocker, malicious URL filtering, and WiFi monitoring. Cyrus also provides support for account restoration and recovery in case of fraud or hacking. The app has received positive reviews for its effectiveness in protecting against various online threats, including account hacking and identity theft. It also offers human chat support to guide users through the process of detection, response, and prevention of cyber threats. Furthermore, Cyrus keeps social media accounts protected by analyzing breaches, exposed passwords, and other cybersecurity threats, and continually reviews account settings to implement best security practices.
Notch	https://www.get-notch.com/	Notch is an insurance service designed to protect digital assets, catering to influencers, shop owners, coaches, and artists who rely on the web for their content and income. It offers instant quotes, real-time alerts, immediate payouts, and a retrieval service in the event of an account hack. The service is endorsed by top creators in the industry.
Spikerz	https://www.spikerz.com/	Spikerz is a social media protection platform that offers real-time protection against various threats such as bots, hackers, impersonators, shadowbans, data loss, and spammers. It allows users to manage all their social media accounts’ security threats from a single location, with features such as 24/7 monitoring, content archiving, anti-phishing, and shadowban protection. The platform is used by influencers, content creators, and businesses to secure their social media accounts. Users have praised it as an effective solution for identifying and preventing threats to their accounts, providing peace of mind and protection against hacking and stolen accounts.
Proofpoint content protection	https://www.proofpoint.com/us/solutions/social-media-account-hacks	Proofpoint Social Media Protection is a service designed to safeguard social media accounts from various threats such as hijacking, unauthorized access, and malicious content. The service offers features like ProfileLock, which monitors and locks down account profiles in case of unauthorized changes, and SocialPatrol, which analyzes and removes hacker-posted content. It also enforces publishing workflows and controls social media app policies to reduce the risk of account hijacking. While there are limited direct user reviews available, the product is generally regarded as effective for everyday usage and is praised for its security features. Additionally, Proofpoint’s email security product has been positively reviewed for its effectiveness in securing email environments. The service is also mentioned to integrate with Hootsuite for social media compliance. If you are considering Proofpoint Social Media Protection, it is advisable to request a demo or contact the vendor for a more detailed understanding of its features and suitability for your specific needs.

Professional Service Solutions

Side by side to these newcomer software products mentioned above, there has also developed an industry of professional services aimed at solving individual user issues with regard to account security and solving account issues.

These include issues such as being locked out of your Instagram/Facebook account, lost access to the Ads Manager, other accounts impersonating your account and more.

The specific methods used by these professional services organizations are not well known, but they range from:

• tricks and backdoors in using the social network service
• direct channels and connections to people working at these social media networks
• working with lawyers to threat the social networks with a lawsuit if the account is not unlocked
• other unknown tricks

These professional services companies have helped thousands of social media users get unlocked from their social media account, restoring access to the account and enabling continued use to earn money from exposure, clicks, affiliates and online sales.