Security
Social Media
Oversharing Online: The Hidden Security Risks for Organisations
Robert
Marketing and sales teams are naturally active online. Social media, professional networks, case studies, and campaigns all play a vital role in building visibility, credibility, and trust. However, when too much detail is shared publicly, it can unintentionally expose the organisation to security risks that directly impact brand reputation and revenue.
Cybercriminals actively monitor public content to gather intelligence. Information shared with good intentions such as client wins, internal processes, or team structures can be used to create highly convincing fraud and phishing attacks that target customers, partners, and internal teams. Threat actors will use this public information and use it to build credible social‑engineering attacks, including spearphishing and business email compromise (BEC). Once information is publicly available, it can be combined with other data points to impersonate trusted individuals, suppliers, or executives, often with serious financial or operational consequences.
Where Oversharing Occurs
Professional and social platforms are a rich source of intelligence for attackers:
- LinkedIn provides detailed insights into job roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, and technology environments, often supplemented by highly specific job adverts.
- GitHub can inadvertently expose project names, technology stacks, internal email addresses, and even credentials or sensitive data through commits and configuration files.
- Consumer social platforms such as Facebook, X and Instagram frequently reveal travel plans, event attendance, or executive availability, which can be exploited to time attacks or justify urgent requests.
Even corporate websites, press releases, and partner announcements can provide attackers with the context needed to construct convincing fraudulent communications.
Common Oversharing Risks
Marketing and sales activity can unintentionally reveal valuable intelligence, including:
- People and roles: Public profiles that clearly show who handles finance, procurement, partnerships, or approvals make impersonation attacks easier.
- Clients and partners: Announcing new relationships or ongoing projects can give attackers the context they need to pose as trusted third parties.
- Technology and processes: Sharing details about tools, platforms, or internal workflows can help attackers tailor more credible messages.
- Timing and availability: Posts about events, travel, or key meetings can be used to justify urgent or “time‑sensitive” requests.
Individually these details may seem harmless, but when combined they significantly increase risk.
How Attackers Weaponise Public Information
Publicly available information is typically used during the reconnaissance phase of an attack. It is then weaponised to create messages that appear relevant, urgent, and legitimate. These may aim to:
- Trick users into installing malware
- Harvest corporate credentials
- Impersonate executives or suppliers to request urgent payments or data
Real‑world incidents demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques, with threat actors using open‑source intelligence (OSINT) to identify targets, relationships, and financial processes before launching attacks.
Reducing the Risk of Oversharing
The risks associated with oversharing can be significantly reduced through clear policy, education, and technical controls:
- Employee awareness: Regular security awareness training should reinforce what information should not be shared publicly, even in professional contexts, and how oversharing enables phishing, BEC, and deepfake attacks.
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Share outcomes, not internals: Focus on results and value delivered, rather than internal processes, systems, or approval flows.
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Delay sensitive announcements: Consider timing when sharing partnerships, deals, or organisational changes to reduce exposure during critical periods.
- Clear social media policies: Organisations should define explicit boundaries on what employees can and cannot share about roles, projects, technologies, clients, and internal operations, across both professional and personal accounts.
- Strong account security: Multi‑factor authentication and unique, strong passwords (managed via a password manager) should be mandatory for all social and professional accounts to reduce the impact of account compromise.
- Ongoing monitoring: Public‑facing content, including social media profiles and corporate websites, should be periodically reviewed to identify and remove information that could be exploited.
A Shared Responsibility
Marketing and sales teams play a critical role in protecting the organisation’s reputation. Every post, profile, and announcement contributes to the company’s public footprint and that footprint is visible to both customers and criminals.
Reducing oversharing is not about restricting marketing activity. It’s about enabling teams to promote the business confidently while protecting trust, relationships, and revenue.
As artificial intelligence makes it easier for attackers to gather intelligence and generate highly convincing phishing messages, the cost of oversharing continues to rise. Organisations should assume that any information in the public domain is accessible to cybercriminals and take proactive steps to minimise their digital footprint. Reducing oversharing is not about limiting visibility—it is about protecting people, processes, and assets from avoidable risk.
