How’s your cyber hygiene looking?

The Impact of Digital Harms on Businesses

Have you ever found yourself mindlessly clicking on a website link, downloading something, only to realize later that it wasn’t what you thought it was? This happened to me the other day and got me thinking about the risks that come with online activities. It took me back to a research study I was part of last year on digital harms among digital sellers and the interplay between risks and opportunities that the digital economy presents.

Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) around the world are increasingly reliant on e-commerce, social media platforms, chat applications, and payment platforms to engage customers, share information, and sell their products and services. However, these platforms come with inherent digital risks. Harmful content can blend into normal activity and newsfeeds, leading audiences to consume it unwittingly and share it with their networks. In today’s fast-moving online ecosystem, rumors about small businesses can spread quickly, finding accelerated pathways to reach new audiences, affecting customer sentiment, and ultimately causing challenges within the business. Similarly, without proper cyber hygiene, businesses can expose themselves to malicious attackers who get access to confidential information that might result in financial or technical harm.

Sensational content amplified by algorithms worsens the issue by creating an atmosphere where digital harms can spread at a faster and larger scale through social media platforms. At the same time, malicious individuals are always developing new strategies to exploit online interactions. This manipulation can lead to financial and technical risks while undermining customer confidence. To spread negativity against a business’s brand and reputation, these malicious actors may employ tactics such as fake reviews, rumors, or fake images. They may also seize control of a company’s online accounts, leading to the entire loss of livelihood. In the most severe situations, targeted attacks on individuals or businesses can result in physical harm and human rights abuses.

With such digital downsides, sellers and buyers are continuously building vigilance, which comes at a high resource cost in terms of time and tools required. This hypervigilance is time-consuming and labor-intensive but is often the most accessible format for cyber hygiene when selling and making purchases online. There are cases of many businesses having backup accounts on social media in case they lose their main account. Others have gone ahead to invest in websites as these help navigate trust concerns as businesses with personal websites are trusted. Others mentioned having to engage in longer conversations that delay the customer conversion time as they seek to verify the client.

Some key takeaways from the report

• One missing gap is the lack of digital literacy on cyber hygiene. Many training programs have focused on how to build digital brands but not on how to protect those brands from cyberbullies. The loss of these brands can result in a loss of livelihood, emphasizing the need to focus on how to protect one’s business online.
• Another challenge is the automated help desk and algorithm management when seeking redress from online platforms. Businesses reported engaging relevant authorities in case of digital harms but often lacked clear guidelines on what needs to be done, requesting more support from policy and leadership on the same.
• Community networks play a critical role as channels for education, reporting, and conducting due diligence when doing business online. They apply to both sellers and buyers and highlight the role of the community and people in establishing trust in digital engagement beyond what is technically availed.
• Digital sellers and buyers have to undertake labor and resource-intensive efforts to build trust when trust is eroded through digital harms that not only affect the business but the entire digital economy as a whole.

There are growing behaviors of reduced use of digital payments following trust concerns, or even some businesses that started online avoiding or having reduced online interactions altogether. This leads them to miss out on opportunities that digital engagement presents and highlights the double-edged sword of digital economy participation. The report calls for more investment in digital safety resources and training for MSMEs in emerging economies and the need to utilize and build capacity for current mechanisms like communities that are already working.

Do you engage in online activities, either as an individual or business capacity? What is your current digital hygiene? Feel free to share with us.

Originally published at http://spurcollective.co on May 2, 2023.