Category: reputation management

Executive Protection on Social Media

With the plethora of information shared on social media, the importance of security is on the rise. For individuals in powerful roles, executives (CEOs and COOs), and celebrities, most of this has to do with the security of personal data. Can hackers get into personal accounts? What will they do with the information they find?

Let’s dive deeper into executive protection (EP) in corporate and high net worth contexts. What can you do to protect your client’s reputation as well as their personal safety? Executive protection teams must be able to handle many different moving parts at once – reputation risk, physical security, and cybersecurity.

Of course, the easiest route is to just stay off social media. But that’s like telling a child not to lick the spoon when baking cake! EP pros need to know how to embrace social media, not reject it. Below are some strategies that can help best protect your clients. 

1) Social media is part of our world. Know how to navigate it.

According to recent research by the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, all but three Fortune 500 companies are active on social media with corporate accounts:

  • 98% use LinkedIn
  • 88% use Twitter
  • 85% use Facebook
  • 75% use YouTube
  • 53% use Instagram
  • 42% maintain blogs
  • 31% use Pinterest
  • 10% use Snapchat

Keeping track of what your principal is up to on social media helps EP pros in several ways. It helps you understand what’s going on in his or her life and what’s important to him or her. Being aware of contexts that are meaningful to your client is a good idea no matter what business you’re in – including the business of executive protection.

Also, observing what the principal is doing on social media – and what others are doing on social media regarding your principal – helps you improve your protective practices. You need to follow and understand what everyone else can follow and understand about the principal simply by taking a look at their smartphones. You need to monitor what others monitor. Then you can add your protective perspective so you’re looking for things that can impact the principal’s wellbeing, including time and place predictability.

2) Disable Geo-enabled Social Media Posts

Enabling the public to know your executive’s location opens up an entirely different world of risks, including oversharing information to those who don’t need it. Geo-enabled social media postings through location-based services (LBS) create physical risk, leaving the executive with little to no privacy.

The best way to combat this risk is to remove it completely – turn off the geo-enabled feature for both your executives and their family members.

Social media posts can also increase time and place predictability. A simple Facebook or Instagram post can broadcast your location quickly and accurately. Maybe the principal just wants to say “Hey, check out this cool picture that shows you what I’m up to and who I’m with.” Although it seems harmless, the principal’s time and place predictability helps the bad guys. They conduct surveillance prior to any bad deed: the ability to predict when a victim will be where helps them plan an attack – and increases their chances of getting away with it.

Protective teams can combat this by using surveillance detection and mixing up routes so the principal is not commuting via the same streets at the same time every day. Keep access to principal itineraries to the absolute minimum.

3) Monitor for Executive Account Imposters

There’s always a risk of imposters on any social platform. Fake accounts are used as part of social engineering and spear-phishing attacks to target customers and other key employees.

Make sure you have a verified account or page. That way, if anyone sees a page that is posting as the executive, but knows that that’s not the official page, they tend to be less believing of the content coming from “unverified” pages. Next, you should have a monitoring system with triggers in place that understands the difference between authorized and unauthorized social media accounts quickly, so take-downs can occur quickly.

3) Don’t Reuse Passwords
It sounds simple enough but passwords are the main portal of entry to any account – whether it be social, personal, or financial. Once a hacker has been able to bypass and figure out an executive’s password the risk factor increases exponentially. Have different passwords for each social account – that way even if one account is compromised, the others not mean an immediate compromise

4) Everyone’s a Journalist

EP professionals need to understand the implications of anyone being able to take a picture (of the principal, of the principal’s family or colleagues, and the EP team) and then posting it to social media where millions, can see it in seconds.

Let’s say your principal is in a restaurant having a meal with a colleague or their family.  It is quite likely that someone in that restaurant will post a picture on social media, maybe even the restaurant owner trying to announce that a prominent person likes their food. No matter what the instance, it could mean that a crowd of people shows up before dinner is done. And that definitely means your principal’s privacy is in jeopardy. Of course, there is no way to prevent all photos or postings…but EP professionals must consider this type of exposure as part of the overall risk environment.

While these tips can certainly help you reduce the threat posed by social media, it’s inevitable that some information about your organization and its employees will be available to criminals through social media. This is why, no matter what else you do, security training for employees is an essential component of any cybersecurity strategy.

How to Protect your Company’s
 Online Reputation

Customers are talking about your brand. Through avenues such as social media, online review sites, blog comments, and community forums, your brand has made an impression…and it’s up to you whether that impression is a positive or negative one.

Because of the plethora of social media choices in play, it can be very difficult to monitor the conversations and truly know what’s being said about your brand every minute of the day. Because of this, more companies are investing in online reputation management (ORM).

ORM is the act of monitoring and engaging in activities to understand and improve the overall public impression a company has online. In other words, it’s public relations for the internet. 

It’s best to stay abreast of what’s being said about your brand, otherwise you will be playing a game of clean up. When it comes to your business’s online reputation, the “fix it later” approach can result in disaster. Hersh Davis-Nitzberg, founder and CEO of crisis management firm Reputation Control Inc., says that entrepreneurs need to be proactive about managing their online reputation before irreversible damage is done. Here are four steps he recommends you take to protect and improve your business.

1) Be Present…Especially where your Customers are

The number one danger to ORM is when companies are not present where their customers are interacting. Social media is only one avenue where your customers are talking about you online. Your customers are not only tweeting or posting on Instagram about you, but they are also gaining support praising or pummeling you on community forums, or the comment section of review sites. 

Unfortunately, on most of these forums, the customer inquiries, concerns, or complaints go unseen and unanswered by a representative of the business. Instead, the forums become support groups for customers as other users share similar questions or poor experiences that they have encountered with in your brand. You definitely do not want this to become a free-for-all bashing your brand.

2) Responding to Negative Content

In most cases, online forums, communities, or review sites allow companies to respond to feedback. When your company or brand receives negative feedback, ideally you should respond as an affirmation. Try not to become defensive or downplay the customer’s experience. The first step is to apologize for the experience and take the conversation offline.

Many review sites and service communities rank high on search engine optimization (SEO). If a company is mentioned negatively on these sites, the best plan of action is to give a short response recognizing the issue, apologizing, then taking the conversation offline. Invite the user to send a direct message or an email. If a company chooses to go back and forth with a consumer, each time the page re-publishes with additional content about the company, search engines will push the content. In turn, the ranking of this negative review can improve.

3) Pushing Positive Content

A key aspect of managing a brand’s online reputation is to create positive content that will rank well in search engine result pages. By constantly pushing out new, credible content you can increase awareness online and build up your brand’s reputation. Quality content could include customer testimonials, related articles, product reviews, press releases, or banner ads on relevant pages that link to your company website.

4) It’s Easier to Build a Good Reputation than Fix a Bad One

Hersh Davis-Nitzberg explains, “It’s easy to ignore your online reputation when everything is going well. But when a crisis strikes, suddenly the information about you on the internet can determine how the media, clients, and even your personal relationships will react. Be on top of your digital footprint before a crisis happens. If you lack an online presence or have a negative reputation, a crisis situation can become a top story. But, if you have established an authentic, positive, and robust reputation, the same event can be a blip on the radar. If something happens, take a step back and look at the big picture. There may not necessarily be a quick fix, but with a solid strategy, you can repair your brand. The biggest mistake you can make in a crisis is to respond without thinking. Quick reactions can turn a minor crisis into a disaster.”

#MeToo Allegations on the Rise in Corporate USA

“People are recognizing the impact — and this is the #MeToo movement — of harassment on people, and how it can impact their careers for years.”
Victoria Lipnic, acting chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

According to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) the data shows a sharp increase in sexual harassment cases in 2018 by as much as 12%.

Based on preliminary data, in FY 2018:

The EEOC filed 66 harassment lawsuits, including 41 that included allegations of sexual harassment. That reflects more than a 50 percent increase in suits challenging sexual harassment over fiscal year 2017.
In addition, charges filed with the EEOC alleging sexual harassment increased by more than 12 percent from fiscal year 2017.
Overall, the EEOC recovered nearly $70 million for the victims of sexual harassment through litigation and administrative enforcement in FY 2018, up from $47.5 million in FY 2017.

More and more companies are being advised to begin a reputation management program within their organization to precede potential threats to their executives and employees.

When Is It Illegal to Fire an Employee over Social Media Posts?

Here are some examples of when an employee’s social media posts should not result in firing, even if it may seem warranted otherwise:

When the post is protected in some way. The most prominent example that some employers overlook or get wrong: Employees should not be fired when their social media post could be considered “concerted activity” and could, therefore, be protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Concerted activity includes discussing working environment among coworkers—even in a negative way in public. Employers can get into trouble when they’re too restrictive in their social media policies—over broad restrictions or repercussions can go against an employee’s NLRA rights.


When there are specific rules that must be followed before a termination (and those are not followed). For example, there may be contractual stipulations with the employee’s union that outline steps that must be taken before any termination. If those steps aren’t followed, the termination may be illegal—even if it would have been fine otherwise.


When the social media post represents some other protected activity, like whistle-blowing, or protected reporting of something else, such as discrimination or harassment.


When the employer/employee are in a state that has other protections. Some states do not allow employers to fire employees for conduct outside of work, as long as the activities themselves are legal. This means that it would be much more difficult for an employer in one of these places to fire someone for conduct it finds distasteful that is still nonetheless legal. Some places also have protections in place for political speech.

*Source: HR Daily Advisor

There is no better time than right now to begin a corporate monitoring program and to be very aware of what is being said about your company and your employees online. A PR social media nightmare can happen in a millisecond and repercussions can last for years.